Since that adventure of the Eagle’s Crag, Wendot had distrusted the old minstrel, and was uneasy at the influence he exercised upon the twins; but the idea of sending him from Dynevor was one which never for a moment entered his head.  Had not Wenwynwyn grown old in his father’s service?  Had he not been born and bred at Dynevor?  The young lord himself seemed to have a scarce more assured right to his place there than the ancient bard.  Be he friend or be he foe, at Dynevor he must remain so long as the breath remained in his body.

The bard was, by hereditary instinct, attached to all the boys, but of late there had been but little community of thought between him and his young chieftain.  Wendot well knew the reason.  The old man hated the English with the bitter, unreasoning, deadly hatred of his wild, untutored nature.  Had he not sprung from a race whose lives had been spent in rousing in the breasts of all who heard them the most fervent and unbounded patriotic enthusiasm?  And was it to be marvelled at that he could not see or understand the changes of the times or the hopelessness of the long struggle, now that half the Welsh nobles were growing cool in the national cause, and the civilization and wealth of the sister country were beginning to show them that their own condition left much to be desired, and that there was something better and higher to be achieved than a so-called liberty, only maintained at the cost of perpetual bloodshed? or a series of petty feuds for supremacy, which went far to keep the land in a state of semi-barbarism?

So the old bard sang his wild songs, and Llewelyn and Howel sat by the glowing fire of logs that blazed in the long winter evenings upon his hearth, listening to his fierce words, and hardening their hearts and bracing their wills against any kind of submission to a foreign yoke.  A burning hatred against the English king also consumed them.  Had they not, at the cost of most bitter humiliation, gone to him as vassals, trusting to his promise that all who did homage for their lands should be confirmed in peaceful possession of the same?  And how had he treated this act of painful submission?  Was it greatly to be wondered at that their hearts burned with an unquenchable hatred?  To them Edward stood as the type of all that was cruel and treacherous and grasping.  They brooded over their wrongs by day and by night; they carried their dark looks with them when they stirred abroad or when they rested at home.  Wenwynwyn sympathized as none besides seemed to do, and he became their great solace and chief counsellor.

Wendot might uneasily wonder what passed in that quiet room of the old man’s, but he never knew or guessed.  He would better have liked to hear Llewelyn burst forth into the old passionate invective.  He was uneasy at this chronic state of gloom and sullen silence on the vexed question of English supremacy.  But seldom a word passed the lips of either twin.  They kept their secret —­ if secret they had —­ locked away in their own breasts.  And days and weeks and months passed by, and Wendot and Griffeth seemed almost as much alone at Dynevor as they had been after their father’s death, when Llewelyn and Howel had betaken themselves to their castle of Carregcennen.