“Wendot!”

It was but one word, but the volume of reproach compressed into it brought Wendot to a sudden stop.  They looked into each other’s eyes a moment, and then Griffeth said, with his sweet, meaning smile: 

“We have never been separated yet, my Wendot; in sorrow and joy we have ever been together.  It is too late to change all that now.  I will be by thy side to the end.  Be it for life or for death we will ride forth together.”

And so with one hard hand clasp that spoke volumes, and with one more long, lingering look at the familiar towers of the old home, Wendot and Griffeth, the Lords of Dynevor, rode forth to meet their fate at the hands of the mighty English king.

Of that sudden, fierce, and partially successful revolt the history books of the age give account.  Llewelyn and his brother David, joined by the whole strength of the North, and by much able assistance from the South, drove back the English across the border; and when Edward, hurrying to the spot, marched against them, his army was utterly routed near the Menai Straits, and the triumphant Welsh believed for a few brief months that they were victors indeed, and that the power of the foe was hopelessly broken.

Llewelyn with his army retired to the fastnesses of Snowdon, where the English durst not pursue them, and these less hardy soldiers suffered so terribly in the winter cold that the mortality in their ranks caused the triumphant mountaineers to prophesy that their work would be done for them without any more exertion on their part.

But the lion-hearted King of England was not of the stuff that easily submits to defeat.  He knew well that Wales was in his power, and that he had but to exercise patience and resolution, and the final victory would be his.

Permitting no relaxation of his efforts in the North, even when the winter’s bitter cold was causing untold sufferings amongst his soldiers, he commenced a muster of troops in the South, from which country most of the disaffected nobles had drawn away to join the insurgents under the Prince of Wales, as Llewelyn was called.  It was a shock of no small magnitude to that prince to hear that his foe was thus employing himself; and leaving the fastnesses of Snowdon with a picked band of his hardiest men, amongst whom he numbered Llewelyn and Howel, he marched southward himself, hoping to overthrow this new force before it had gathered power sufficient to be dangerous.

Wendot would gladly have been of the number, for inaction, and the rude barbarism he saw around him, were inexpressibly galling to him; and the more he saw of the savage spirits by whom he was surrounded the less he was able to hope for any permanent advantage as the result of this rising.  The jealousies of the respective chiefs were hardly held in check even in the face of a common peril.  It was impossible not to foresee that the termination of a war with England would only be the signal for an outbreak of innumerable petty animosities and hostile feuds.