And he was set there with all the still rites of the ancient Church of the Briton, in the way which he had learned to love.

Alone, unmarked Gymbert lies, out of sight of the warriors against whom he came.  The Mercians dared not touch him, and the Welsh would not.  But Jefan bade that man who had shot at him see to him, and that was the punishment for his deed.  Men say that when a storm breaks round Dynedor hill fort it is ill to be there, for then he wanders round the gate unquiet and wailing; and so he also is not forgotten, nor the evil which he wrought.

That evening we were in some Welsh thane’s house, far in the folds of the Black Mountains, and there not even Offa could reach us.  The people had come with litters and hill ponies, and slowly and somewhat painfully we had gone our way from the hill, gathering the cattle, and leaving men to bring them after us still more slowly.

“Hurry no man’s cattle,” quoth Kynan, “except when they are by way of becoming yours by right of haste homeward to the hills.”

In this homestead, whose name I cannot write, we rested for a fortnight or so, while Sighard gathered his strength again and Jefan’s ankle knit itself together.  For me there was the best of hunting in the hills and rich forests with Kynan, who was a master of all woodcraft, and with our host.  Wonderfully plentiful was game of all sorts, whether red deer or fallow, boar, or wolf, or badger in the forests, and here and there beaver as well as otter in the swift trout streams.  There were the white wild cattle also; and there were tales of a bear somewhere in the hills, but we never came on his tracks, though I knew them well from having seen them often enough on the Basque frontier lands.  That one chance of having slain the bear there was the only matter of hunting in which I was ahead of my hosts.

At the end of the fortnight we went from this village to the ancient city of Caerleon, travelling slowly, though Jefan made shift to mount a horse, and so ride with us.  Pleasant were the June days that passed among the hilly ways, under the great green mountains, and through the forest lands, with good friends and pleasant halts by the way.  And I was going homeward now in all truth.

Jefan had a wonderful palace in Caerleon, which his forbears had held since the days when they took the place of the Roman governor by whom it had been built.  I think that it had been but little altered, and on its walls were still the pictures the artists brought from far-off Rome had painted, and its floors were laid with the wondrous patterned pavement of the old days, so beautiful that it almost seemed a shame to tread on them.  The old Roman walls stood round the town, and there were more houses, less but well-nigh as good, in the place, and the great tower the Romans made.