ghard 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.

Yet, being a Saxon and a forest-bred man, I cared not at all for
the stone-walled houses. They seemed low and hot to me, and above
one was the ceiled roof, all unlike the high open timbering of our
halls, where the smoke curls, and the birds are as free to perch on
the timbers as they were in the oaks whence they were cut. The
walls round the town irked me also, for one does not like to feel
shut in from the open country. One must have fences, of course, and
maybe in border places earthworks and stockades, but surely no more
should be needed. Yet in a day or two I grew used to all this, and
I have naught but good to say of Caerleon elsewise.

For when we had been there a few days Jefan would speak with me,
and together we went to the walls of the city