“I know not what to think, but my heart misgives me.  Thou knowest what Llewelyn ever was, and Howel is but his shadow.  I have mistrusted this strange friendship before now, remembering what chanced that first day, and that Llewelyn never forgives or forgets; but I would not have dreamed of such a thing as this.  Yet, Griffeth, if the thing is so, there is no time to lose.  I am off for the crag this very minute.  Thou must quietly collect and arm a few of our stanchest men, together with the English servants left here with their young mistress.  Let all be done secretly and quietly, and come after me with all speed.  It may be that we are on a fool’s errand, and that our fears are groundless.  But truly it may be that our brothers are about to betray our guest into the hands of one of England’s most bitter foes.

“Oh, methinks were her father to return, and I had her not safe to deliver back to him, I would not for very shame live to see the day when I must avow to him what had befallen his child at the hands of my brethren!”

Griffeth was fully alive to the possible peril menacing the child, and eagerly took his orders from his elder brother.  It would not be difficult to summon some dozen of the armed men on the place to accompany him quietly and secretly.  They would follow upon Wendot’s fleet steps with as little delay as might be, and would at least track the fugitive and her guides, whether they succeeded in effecting a rescue that day or not.

Wendot waited for nothing but to give a few directions to his brother.  Scarce ten minutes had elapsed from the moment when the first illumination of mind had come to him respecting some plot against the life of an innocent child, before he had armed himself, and unleashed two of the fleetest, strongest, fiercest of the hounds, and was speeding up across the moor and fell towards the lonely crag of the eagle’s nest, which lay halfway between the castle of Dynevor and the abode of Maelgon ap Caradoc.

There was one advantage Wendot possessed over his brothers, and that was that he could take the wild-deer tracks which led straight onward and upward, whilst they with their charge would have to keep to the winding mule track, which trebled the distance.  The maiden’s palfrey was none too clever or surefooted upon these rough hillsides, and their progress would be but slow.

Wendot moved as if he had wings to his feet, and although the hot summer sun began to beat down upon his head, and his breath came in deep, laboured gasps, he felt neither heat nor fatigue, but pressed as eagerly onwards and upwards as the strong, fleet hounds at his side.