will fight far better for him than
the Welsh, themselves, can do; and he has but to leave the army to
wander about through the mountains and forests, as he did last time, to
ensure that they must, ere long, fall back."

At daybreak the next morning, they set out and rode to Welshpool. This
being a walled town, and the population almost entirely English, they
could leave their horses here, in safety. They first went to the
governor's, and upon Oswald's explaining that they were the bearers of
a letter for the king, and asking whether he could give them any
information as to the direction they had best take, he shook his head.

"No news has come hither, for the last five days," he said. "A herd of
bullocks arrived here, three days since, and were to have been
forwarded on to the army; but the Welsh are out in force, and every
road beset. Parties have come down from the hills overlooking us, and
have fired several houses, that escaped when they last attacked us. My
force is sufficient to hold the town against any attacks, but I cannot
spare so many men as would be required to convoy the cattle. I told the
king so, before he went on; but he said that no Welshman would dare
show himself, when the army had once passed on; and that every Welsh
house and village would be destroyed, and all within them put to the
sword, so that I should have no difficulty in sending forward cattle,
and other supplies.

"That the villages have been destroyed I have no doubt, for the
messengers who came in from Llanfair told me that, as they passed over
the hills, they could see smoke rising from the forests in all
directions; but whether the inhabitants remained, quietly awaiting the
arrival of the troops, is more than doubtful. There were beacon fires
on all the hills, the night before the army left Shrewsbury, and again
on the next night. Since then, we have seen no more from here, but
those who came from Llanfair told us that they were burning, on every
hill, the night they got there; so I have no doubt that the old men,
women, and children were at once sent off, probably to shelter in the
Plinlimmon district, or mayhap in the forests of Cader Idris. At any
rate, we may be sure that very few will be found at their villages. It
was so the last time the king's army marched along, and the same when
he made his way through Denbigh to Anglesey.

"The Welsh care little for the burning of their houses. It takes but
two or three days' work to reb