with due solemnity, near the tomb of his father, at the moment he should learn the secret of his birth, and the miseries produced by it.  She would then see the first use to which her boy would put it.  The prince had nearly spent his last breath in the service of his beloved mistress; he could only instruct her by signs to put on a magnificent robe which lay near him, and hasten her departure.  She staggered through the town, arrived in the solitary fields, heard the distant knell announce her lover’s death, and sunk exhausted to the ground.  At length the air revived her; she slowly renewed her journey, and returned to her castle, which, by virtue of her ring, she entered undisturbed.  Till the birth of her son, and from that time to the conclusion of his education, she lived in silent anguish, and in patient expectation of the day of vengeance.  The young Ywonec, by his beauty and address, recalled to her mind the loved image of his father; and at length she beheld him, with a throbbing heart, invested, amidst the applause of all the spectators, with the dignity of knighthood.  The hour of retribution was now fast approaching.  At the feast of St. Aaron, in the same year, the baron was summoned with his family to Caerleon, where the festival was held with great solemnity.  In the course of their journey they stopped for the night in a spacious abbey, where they were received with the greatest hospitality.  The good abbot, for the purpose of detaining his guests another day, exhibited to them the whole of the apartments, the dormitory, the refectory, and the chapter-house, in which they beheld a vast sepulchral monument, covered with a superb pall, fringed with gold, and surrounded by twenty waxen tapers in golden candlesticks, while a vast silver censer, constantly burning, filled the air with fumes of incense.  The guests naturally inquired concerning the name and quality of the person who reposed in that splendid tomb; and were told it was the late king of that country; the best, the handsomest, the wisest, the most courteous and liberal of mankind; that he was treacherously slain at Caerwent, for his love to the lady of that castle; that since his death his subjects had respected his dying injunctions, and reserved the crown for a son, whose arrival they still expected with much anxiety.  On hearing this story the lady cried aloud to Ywonec, “Fair son, thou hast heard how Providence hath conducted us hither.  Here lies thy father whom this old man slew with felony.  I now put into thy hands the sword of thy sire; I have kept it long enough.”  She then proceeded to tell him the sad adventure of his birth, and, having with much difficulty concluded the recital, fell dead on the tomb of her husband.  Ywonec, almost frantic with grief and horror, instantly sacrificed his hoary stepfather to the manes of his parents, and having caused his mother to be interred with suitable honours, accepted from his subjects the crown they had reserved for the representative of a long line of royal ancestors.