"O King!" said the bard, "the music hath left the harp."

"Ha!" murmured Gryffyth, "and Hope the earth! Bard, answer the son of
Llewellyn. Oft in my halls hast thou sung the praise of the men that
have been. In the halls of the race to come, will bards yet unborn sweep
their harps to the deeds of thy King? Shall they tell of the day of
Torques, by Llyn-Afangc, when the princes of Powys fled from his sword as
the clouds from the blast of the wind? Shall they sing, as the Hirlas
goes round, of his steeds of the sea, when no flag came in sight of his
prows between the dark isle of the Druid [167] and the green pastures of
Huerdan? [168] Or the towns that he fired, on the lands of the Saxon,
when Rolf and the Nortbmen ran fast from his javelin and spear? Or say,
Child of Truth, if all that is told of Gryffyth thy King shall be his woe
and his shame?"

The bard swept his hand over his eyes, and answered:

"Bards unborn shall sing of Gryffyth the son of Llewellyn. But the song
shall not dwell on the pomp of his power, when twenty sub-kings knelt at
his throne, and his beacon was lighted in the holds of the Norman and
Saxon. Bards shall sing of the hero, who fought every inch of crag and
morass in the front of his men,--and on the heights of Penmaen-mawr, Fame
recovers thy crown!"

"Then I have lived as my fathers in life, and shall live with their glory
in death!" said Gryffyth; "and so the shadow hath passed from my soul."
Then turning round, still propped upon his elbow, he fixed his proud eye
upon Aldyth, and said gravely, "Wife, pale is thy face, and gloomy thy
brow; mournest thou the throne or the man?"

Aldyth cast on her wild lord a look of more terror than compassion, a
look without the grief that is gentle, or the love that reveres; and
answered:

"What matter to thee my thoughts or my sufferings? The sword or the
famine is the doom thou hast chosen. Listening to vain dreams from thy
bard, or thine own pride as idle, thou disdainest life for us both: be it
so; let us die!"

A strange blending of fondness and wrath troubled the pride on Gryffyth's
features, uncouth and half savage as they were, but still noble and
kingly.

"And what terror has death, if thou lovest me?" said he.

Aldyth shivered and turned aside. The unhappy King gazed hard on that
face, which, despite sore trial and recent exposure to rough wind and
weather, still retained the proverbial beauty of the Saxon women--but
beauty wi