So Wendot would have been thankful to escape from this irksome inactivity, and to join the band going south; but the condition of Griffeth withheld him, for the youth was very ill, and he often felt that this winter of hardship up in the mountain air was killing him by inches, although he never complained.

It was out of the question for Griffeth to march or to fight.  He lay most of the day beside a little fire of peat, in a cabin that Wendot and his men had constructed with their own hands, beneath the shelter of a rock which broke the force of the north wind, and formed some protection against the deep snow.  Griffeth had borne his share gallantly in the earlier part of the campaign, but a slight wound had laid him aside; and since the intense cold had come, he had only grown more white and wasted and feeble day by day.  Now that the sun was gaining a little more power, and that the melting of the snow bespoke that spring was at hand, Wendot began to hope the worst was over; but to leave his brother in such a state was out of the question, and he saw Llewelyn and Howel depart without attempting to join them.

Days and weeks had passed, and no news had been received by those up in the mountains of the result of Llewelyn’s expedition.  It was reported by scouts that Edward was at Carnarvon Castle in person, making hostile demonstrations of a determined kind, which, in the absence of their chief, the wild Welsh kerns knew not how to repel.  They were safe where they were, and awaited the return of their leader; but a terrible stroke had yet to fall upon them, which proved the final blow to all their hopes and ambitions.

It was a wild, windy night.  Wendot had piled the fire high, and was sitting with Griffeth talking of past days, and gazing with an unconscious wistfulness into the glowing embers, which seemed to him to take the semblance of those familiar towers and rocks which he sometimes felt as though he should never see again.  Griffeth paused in the midst of something he was saying, and looked round with a start.  It seemed to both brothers as though a hand was fumbling at the latch.  Wendot rose and opened the door, and a tall, gaunt figure staggered rather than walked into the room, and sank down as if perfectly exhausted beside the glowing fire.

Griffeth uttered a startled exclamation.

“Llewelyn!” he cried sharply; and Wendot, barring the door, and coming forward like one in a dream, asked with the calmness of one who reads dire disaster: 

“Where is Howel?”

“Dead,” came the answer in a hollow voice, as though the speaker was exhausted past words —­ “dead by the side of Llewelyn our prince.  Would that I too lay beside them!”

Wendot, too stunned to say another word at that moment, busied himself in getting his brother food and wine, of which he plainly stood sorely in need.  He ate ravenously and in perfect silence; and his brothers watched him without having the heart to put another question.  Indeed they knew the worst:  their prince dead; the flower of their army slain —­ their own brother among the number —­ the rest dispersed; the remaining forces without a leader, without a rallying point, without a hope.  What need of farther words?