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THE TALENT THOU GAVEST
“Eben bach, why for now do you waste your days in sleep? Go you, little son, and dig a hole in the place where stood Old Shaci’s hut.”
“It’ll be a big hole, little Big Man,” answered Eben, “if I must make it the size of Old Shaci’s hut.”
The Big Man replied: “There’s a boy you are for pleading! Go you up and stand against the sour apple tree with your face to the sea. At a distance of three steps from the trunk of the tree dig an old hole after the fashion of a grave.”
“Do you tell me now for what?” Eben asked.
“For sure, is there not a talent buried there?”
Eben left Shames’s sheep and came to Penrhos.
“Little Simon,” he said, “lend you me an old pickaxe and a shovel.”
Returning, he numbered the sheep, and
69
