CHAPTER VIII.  TURBULENT SPIRITS.

The four sons of Res Vychan went back to Dynevor together, there to settle down, outwardly at least, to a quiet and uneventful life, chiefly diversified by hunting and fishing, and such adventures as are inseparable from those pastimes in which eager lads are engrossed.

Wendot both looked and felt older for his experiences in the castle of Rhuddlan.  His face had lost much of its boyishness, and had taken a thoughtfulness beyond his years.  Sometimes he appeared considerably oppressed by the weight of the responsibility with which he had charged himself, and would watch the movements and listen to the talk of the twins with but slightly concealed uneasiness.

Yet as days merged into weeks, and weeks lengthened into months, and still there had been nothing to alarm him unduly, he began, as the inclement winter drew on, to breathe more freely; for in the winter months all hostilities of necessity ceased, for the mountain passes were always blocked with snow, and both travelling and fighting were practically out of the question for a considerable time.

Wendot, too, had matters enough to occupy his mind quite apart from the charge of his two haughty brothers.  He had his own estates to administer —­ no light task for a youth not yet eighteen —­ and his large household to order; and though Griffeth gave him every help, Llewelyn and Howel stood sullenly aloof, and would not appear to take the least interest in anything that appertained to Dynevor, although they gave no reason for their conduct, and were not in other ways unfriendly to their brothers.

The country was for the time being quiet and at peace.  Exhausted by its own internal struggles and by the late disastrous campaign against the English, the land was, as it were, resting and recruiting itself, in preparation, perhaps, for another outbreak later on.  In the meantime, sanguine spirits like those of Wendot and Griffeth began to cherish hopes that the long and weary struggle was over at last, and that the nation, as a nation, would begin to realize the wisdom and the advantage of making a friend and ally of the powerful monarch of England, instead of provoking him to acts of tyranny and retaliation by perpetual and fruitless rebellions against a will far too strong to be successfully resisted.

But Llewelyn and Howel never spoke of the English without words and looks indicative of the deepest hatred; and the smouldering fire in their breasts was kept glowing and burning by the wild words and the wilder songs of the old bard Wenwynwyn, who spent the best part of his time shut up in his own bare room, with his harp for his companion, in which room Llewelyn and Howel spent much of their time during the dark winter days, when they could be less and less out of doors.