“Heigho!” said Richard, “I shall console myself with purchasing all beautiful things that can be touched and handled.  Life is a flimsy vapor which passes and is not any more:  presently Branwen will be married to this Gwyllem and will be grown fat and old, and I shall be remarried to little Dame Isabel, and shall be King of England:  and a trifle later all four of us shall be dead.  Pending this deplorable consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself.”

Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the latter send the promised implements to Caer Idion.  Richard, returning to the hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at the threshold.  Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and through tearless sobs told of what had happened.  A half-hour earlier, while she and Branwen were intent upon their milking, Gwyllem had ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor.  Branwen had called him sot, had bidden him go home.  “That I will do,” said Gwyllem and suddenly caught up the girl.  Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist Gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away with Branwen.

Richard made no observation.  In silence he fetched his horse, and did not pause to saddle it.  Quickly he rode to Gwyllem’s house, and broke in the door.  Against the farther wall stood lithe Branwen fighting silently:  her breasts and shoulders were naked, where Gwyllem had torn away her garments.  He wheedled, laughed, swore, and hiccoughed, turn by turn, but she was silent.

“On guard!” Richard barked.  Gwyllem wheeled.  His head twisted toward his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth convulsively snapped upward, so that his teeth were bared.  There was a knife at Richard’s girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung away.  He stepped eagerly toward the snarling Welshman, and with both hands seized the thick and hairy throat.  What followed was brutal.

For many minutes Branwen stood with averted face, shuddering.  She very dimly heard the sound of Gwyllem’s impotent fists as they beat against the countenance and body of Richard, and heard the thin splitting vicious noise of torn cloth as Gwyllem clutched at Richard’s tunic and tore it many times.  Richard did not utter any articulate word, and Gwyllem could not.  There was entire silence for a heart-beat, and the thudding fall of something ponderous and limp.

“Come!” Richard said then.  Through the hut’s twilight he came, as glorious in her eyes as Michael fresh from that primal battle with old Satan.  Tall Richard came to her, his face all blood, and lifted her in his arms lest Branwen’s skirt be soiled by the demolished thing which sprawled across their path.  She never spoke.  She could not speak.  In his arms she rode homeward, passive, and content.  The horse trod with deliberation.  In the east the young moon was taking heart as the darkness thickened, and innumerable stars awoke.  Branwen noted these things incuriously.