rned.

One by one as these gathered, they came and looked at me, and
laughed, making rough jests at me, which I heeded not at all, if
they made my blood boil now and then. Once, indeed, their leader
shouted roughly to them to forbear, when some evil words came with
a hoarse gust of laughter to his ears, and they said under their
breath, chuckling as at a new jest:

"Evan has a mind to tell Tregoz that he treated the Saxon well,"
and so left me. It seemed to me that I had heard that name at
Norton.

When the best part of the band had gathered again they lit another
fire fifty yards from me, and round it they talked and wrangled for
a good half hour. It was plain that they were speaking about me and
my fate, but I could hear little of what they said.

The leader took not much part in the talk at first, but let the
rest have their say. And when they had talked themselves out, as it
were, he told them his plans. I could not hear them, but the rest
listened attentively enough, and at the end of his speech seemed to
agree, for they laughed and shouted and made not much comment.

Then the leaders got up and came and looked at me.

"Tell him what we are going to do with him, Evan," one said to the
chief.

So Evan spoke in the worst Saxon I had ever heard, and I thought
that it fitted his face well.

"No good glaring in that wise," he said; "if you are quiet no harm
will come to you. We are going to hold you as a hostage until your
Saxon master or your British father pay ransom for you, and inlaw
us again. That last is a notion of my own, for I am by way of being
an honest man. The rest do not care for anything but the money we
shall get for you from one side or the other, or maybe from both.
By and by, when we have you in a safe place, you shall write a
letter for us to use, and I will have you speak well of me in it,
so that it shall be plain that you owe your life to me, and then I
shall be safe. That is a matter between you and me, however. None
of these knaves ken a word of Saxon."

I suppose that I showed pretty plainly what I thought of this sort
of treachery to his comrades, for one of the others laughed at me,
and said:

"Speak him fair, Evan, speak him fair, else we shall have trouble
with him."

"I am just threatening him now," the villain said in Welsh--"after
that is time to give him a chance to behave himself," and then he
went on to me in Saxon: "Now, if you will give your word to keep
quiet and g