“Thou hast grown old and worn of late, too saddened, too grave for thy years.  Thou must grow young again, and be the bright-faced youth to whom I gave my heart.  Thy youth is not left so far behind but what thou canst recall it ere it be too late.”

“In sooth I shall grow young again here, sweetheart,” quoth Wendot, or Vychan, as we must call him now.  He had an equal right to that name with his father, though for convenience he had always been addressed by the other; and now that Lady Gertrude had brought her husband home, he was to be known as Res Vychan, one of the descendants of the last princes of South Wales, who had taken his wife’s name also, as he was now the ruler of her land; so, according to the fashion of the English people, he would henceforth be known as Vychan Cherleton.  His brother’s name he could not bear to hear applied to himself, and it was left to Joanna to explain matters to the king and queen when the chance should arrive.  None else need ever know that the husband of the Lady Gertrude had ever been a captive of Edward’s; and the name of Griffeth ap Res Vychan disappears from the ken of the chroniclers as if it had never been known that he was once a prisoner in England.

There was no pursuit made after the missing Welshman.  The king and queen had other matters to think of, and the fondness of their son for the youth would have been protection enough even if he had not begged with his dying breath that his father would forgive and forget.  Lady Gertrude and her husband did not come to court for very many years; and by the time they did so, Vychan Cherleton’s loyalty and service to the English cause were too well established for any one to raise a question as to his birth or race.

If the king and queen ever knew they had been outwitted by their children, they did not resent that this had been so, nor that an act of mercy had been contrived greater than they might have felt justified in ratifying.

But all this was yet in the future.  As Vychan and his wife stood on that high plateau overlooking the fair valley of the Derwent, it seemed to Gertrude as though during the past three days her husband had undergone some subtle change.  There was a new light in his eyes; his frame had lost its drooping air of languor; he had stood the long days of rough riding without the smallest fatigue.  It really seemed as if the old Wendot had come back again, and she smilingly asked him how it was that he had gained such strength in so short a time.

“Ah, that question is soon answered, sweet wife.  It is freedom that is the elixir of life to us sons of Cambria.  I know not if your English-born men can brook the sense of fetter and constraint, but it is death to us.

“Let us not think of it more.  That page has closed for ever; and never shall it reopen, for sooner will I die than fall alive into the hands of a foe.  Nay, sweetest Gertrude, look not so reproachfully at me.  Thou shalt soon see that I mean not to die, but to live for thee.  Here in this fair, free spot we begin our new life together.  It may be even yet —­ for see, is not that bright sky, illumined by those quivering shafts of light athwart our path, an omen of good? —­ that as thou showest me this fair spot with which thou hast endowed me, I may one day show thee again and endow thee with the broad lands of Dynevor.”