The Making of William Edwards; or, The Story of the Bridge of Beauty

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George David Banks. The Making of William Edwards; or, The Story of the Bridge of Beauty

CHAPTER I. A THUNDERSTORM

CHAPTER II. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

CHAPTER III. A BOY'S WILL

CHAPTER IV. PAYING THE RENT

CHAPTER V. THE NEW INMATE

CHAPTER VI. LOST

CHAPTER VII. THE YOUNG PLAGUE

CHAPTER VIII. THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS

CHAPTER IX. THE BAFFLED AGENT

CHAPTER X. FRIENDS AND BROTHERS

CHAPTER XI. A MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER

CHAPTER XII. CAERPHILLY CASTLE

CHAPTER XIII. MAN PROPOSES

CHAPTER XIV. WHERE IS EVAN?

CHAPTER XV. A STOP-GAP

CHAPTER XVI. DISCOVERIES

CHAPTER XVII. PROPER TOOLS

CHAPTER XVIII. IN THE GRIP OF A STRONG HAND

CHAPTER XIX. WITH GRANDFATHER'S GOLD

CHAPTER XX. IN THE NICK OF TIME

CHAPTER XXI. THE FINGER OF GOD

CHAPTER XXII. A BLIND INSTRUCTOR

CHAPTER XXIII. BRIDGE-BUILDING

CHAPTER XXIV. PONT-Y-PRIDD

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Is there any record of a catastrophe so great or appalling that it could not possibly have been worse?

In the first hours of her sudden bereavement, Mrs. Edwards felt as if an overwhelming flood of desolation had swept over her, and left her and her orphans helpless and hopeless. Not that her husband had been the most active spirit on the farm, but she was in no condition to reason or to weigh probabilities. She had not been wont to rely on him for advice or action, but in losing him she felt as if all was lost.

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The valley of the Taff has long been noted for its fertility. It was otherwise in the early years of the last century, when husbandry in Wales was so primitive that the spade did duty for the plough, and crops had to be wrung from exhausted soil wholly by hand-labour; ignorance, and old prejudice in favour of doing as their fathers had done before them, standing in the way of progress, equally with the paucity of good roads and bridges over which to convey produce.

In places the lowlands near the river were fertile; and where the stream was bordered by lofty slopes, and not hemmed in by precipitous limestone crags, they were clothed with dense woods of fir and mountain ash, oak and beech, with sallows by the water edge, all more esteemed by the sparse population for their timber than for their wondrously picturesque beauty. But at the top of the mountain range eastward of the vale, and on their upper slopes, much of the ground was sour and boggy, and called for more agricultural knowledge and appliances than had found their way thither, even when this century was born.

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