hung with trees, and at the bottom of which a brook murmured.
Descending a steep path, I knocked at the door. After a little time it
was opened, and two women appeared, one behind the other. The first was
about sixty; she was very powerfully made, had stern grey eyes and harsh
features, and was dressed in the ancient Welsh female fashion, having a
kind of riding-habit of blue and a high conical hat like that of the
Tyrol. The other seemed about twenty years younger; she had dark
features, was dressed like the other, but had no hat. I saluted the
first in English, and asked her the way to the Bridge, whereupon she
uttered a deep guttural "augh" and turned away her head, seemingly in
abhorrence. I then spoke to her in Welsh, saying I was a foreign man--I
did not say a Saxon--was bound to the Devil's Bridge, and wanted to know
the way. The old woman surveyed me sternly for some time, then turned to
the other and said something, and the two began to talk to each other,
but in a low, buzzing tone, so that I could not distinguish a word. In
about half a minute the eldest turned to me, and extending her arm and
spreading out her five fingers wide, motioned to the side of the hill in
the direction which I had been following.

"If I go that way shall I get to the bridge of the evil man?" said I, but
got no other answer than a furious grimace and violent agitations of the
arm and fingers in the same direction. I turned away, and scarcely had I
done so when the door was slammed to behind me with great force, and I
heard two "aughs," one not quite so deep and abhorrent as the other,
probably proceeding from the throat of the younger female.

"Two regular Saxon-hating Welsh women," said I, philosophically; "just of
the same sort no doubt as those who played such pranks on the slain
bodies of the English soldiers, after the victory achieved by Glendower
over Mortimer on the Severn's side."

I proceeded in the direction indicated, winding round the side of the
hill, the same mountain which the old man had pointed out to me some time
before. At length, on making a turn I saw a very lofty mountain in the
far distance to the south-west, a hill right before me to the south, and,
on my left, a meadow overhung by the southern hill, in the middle of
which stood a house from which proceeded a violent barking of dogs. I
would fain have made immediately up to it for the purpose of inquiring my
way, but saw no means of doing so, a hig