taliation by perpetual and
fruitless rebellions against a will far too strong to be successfully
resisted.

But Llewelyn and Howel never spoke of the English without words and
looks indicative of the deepest hatred; and the smouldering fire in
their breasts was kept glowing and burning by the wild words and the
wilder songs of the old bard Wenwynwyn, who spent the best part of his
time shut up in his own bare room, with his harp for his companion, in
which room Llewelyn and Howel spent much of their time during the dark
winter days, when they could be less and less out of doors.

Since that adventure of the Eagle's Crag, Wendot had distrusted the old
minstrel, and was uneasy at the influence he exercised upon the twins;
but the idea of sending him from Dynevor was one which never for a
moment entered his head. Had not Wenwynwyn grown old in his father's
service? Had he not been born and bred at Dynevor? The young lord
himself seemed to have a scarce more assured right to his place there
than the ancient bard. Be he friend or be he foe, at Dynevor he must
remain so long as the breath remained in his body.

The bard was, by hereditary instinct, attached to all the boys, but of
late there had been but little community of thought between him and his
young chieftain. Wendot well knew the reason. The old man hated the
English with the bitter, unreasoning, deadly hatred of his wild,
untutored nature. Had he not sprung from a race whose lives had been
spent in rousing in the breasts of all who heard them the most fervent
and unbounded patriotic enthusiasm? And was it to be marvelled at that
he could not see or understand the changes of the times or the
hopelessness of the long struggle, now that half the Welsh nobles were
growing cool in the national cause, and the civilization and wealth of
the sister country were beginning to show them that their own condition
left much to be desired, and that there was something better and higher
to be achieved than a so-called liberty, only maintained at the cost of
perpetual bloodshed? or a series of petty feuds for supremacy, which
went far to keep the land in a state of semi-barbarism?

So the old bard sang his wild songs, and Llewelyn and Howel sat by the
glowing fire of logs that blazed in the long winter evenings upon his
hearth, listening to his fierce words, and hardening their hearts and
bracing their wills against any kind of submission to a foreign yoke. A
burning hatred agai