The stranger in the mist
by Ana Paula - September 2004
Giles Hampton went to spend a short holiday in Wales with Beverley, a friend of his who had moved there. Giles was interested in geology, he studies rocks and stones.
One day, in the morning, Beverly had business in town, so Giles decided to make an excursion to a place on the other side of the mountains. He put some sandwiches and hammers in his bag and left. He examined some rocks and it was half-past three when he finished, so he decided to start his journey back. However, a thick mist came down and covered everything.
In the morning, when he had been walking through the mountains he had looked out for landmarks, but in the misty evening, everything looked strange and he realized that he was lost.
Suddenly he heard a noise and shouted. An old man appeared with a dog speaking Welsh. Giles made signs to show that he didn’t understand and that he was lost. The old man seemed to understand and pulled out a map which he gave Giles to help him.
He set out along the path that the old man had shown him, moving very carefully because he could only see a few feet ahead. Suddenly his foot slipped on a sharp stone and he almost fell. That stone saved his life because it flew up from under his foot and rolled down the steep path. He heard a crash as the stone hit the ground hundreds of feet below. The path had led him to the edge of a cliff, but there wasn’t a cliff on the map that the man had shown him.
He decided to sit and wait for the mist to clear. A few minutes later he heard a voice shouting . He recognized the voice of Beverly’s servant who led Giles safety back towards the house, but Giles didn’t tell him about the old man.
At dinner, his friend said that he had had a very lucky escape, because there had been some nasty accidents in these hills, where a man had been killed some time before. In the dead man’s pocket there was an old map. When Giles heard the story, he told Beverly the whole story of the stranger in the mist. There was a man called Mr Roberts, who had a copy of an old map and they called him.
Giles fetched his map and spread it out on the table. It was a very old map. Mr. Roberts arrived and they noticed that the maps were exactly the same. There was only one copy and it was in the museum in Caernarvon. Giles saw a name on the map and asked who Madog ap Rhys was.
Mr Roberts replied that he was an old man who had lived alone on the hillside and spent most of his time praying. He had died in 1720 and whenever there was a mist, Madog walked among the hills with his dog beside him. He always carried a map to give to people who had lost their way.
Giles came to conclusion that Madog was a good man who only wanted to help, but he had led the man who had been killed some time before and he had almost killed him.