ing at it with dim eyes.

But over the lower part of the wall nearest to the barrow, leant three
men. The wall there was so broken, that they could gaze over it on that
grotesque yet dismal court; and the eyes of the three men, with a fierce
and wolfish glare, were bent on Gryffyth.

Three princes were they of the great old line; far as Gryffyth they
traced the fabulous honours of their race, to Hu-Gadarn and Prydain, and
each thought it shame that Gryffyth should be lord over him! Each had
had throne and court of his own; each his "white palace" of peeled willow
wands--poor substitutes, O kings, for the palaces and towers that the
arts of Rome had bequeathed your fathers! And each had been subjugated
by the son of Llewellyn, when, in his day of might, he re-united under
his sole sway all the multiform principalities of Wales, and regained,
for a moment's splendour, the throne of Roderic the Great.

"Is it," said Owain, in a hollow whisper, "for yon man, whom heaven hath
deserted, who could not keep his very torque from the gripe of the Saxon,
that we are to die on these hills, gnawing the flesh from our bones?
Think ye not the hour is come?"

"The hour will come, when the sheep, and the horse, and the dog are
devoured," replied Modred, "and when the whole force, as one man, will
cry to Gryffyth, 'Thou a king!--give us bread!'"

"It is well," said the third, an old man, leaning on a wand of solid
silver, while the mountain wind, sweeping between the walls, played with
the rags of his robe,--"it is well that the night's sally, less of war
than of hunger, was foiled even of forage and food. Had the saints been
with Gryffyth, who had dared to keep faith with Tostig the Saxon."

Owain laughed, a laugh hollow and false.

"Art thou Cymrian, and talkest of faith with a Saxon? Faith with the
spoiler, the ravisher and butcher? But a Cymrian keeps faith with
revenge; and Gryffyth's trunk should be still crownless and headless,
though Tostig had never proffered the barter of safety and food. Hist!
Gryffyth wakes from the black dream, and his eyes glow from under his
hair."

And indeed at this moment the King raised himself on his elbow, and
looked round with a haggard and fierce despair in his glittering eyes.

"Play to us, Harper; sing some song of the deeds of old!" The bard
mournfully strove to sweep the harp, but the chords were broken, and the
note came discordant and shrill as the sigh of a wailing fiend.