We have not space again to describe this portion of Hubert’s life, upon which we now enter, in any detail.  Suffice it to say he went to Hereford Castle with the earl, and was soon transferred to an outpost on the upper Wye, where he was at once engaged in deadly warfare with the fiercest of savages.  For the Welsh, once the cultivated Britons, had degenerated into savagery.  Bloodshed and fire raising amongst the hated “Saxons” (as they called all the English alike) were the amusement and the business of their lives, until Edward the First, of dire necessity, conquered and tamed them in the very next generation.  Until then, the Welsh borders were a hundred times more insecure than the Cheviots.  No treaties could bind the mountaineers.  They took oaths of allegiance, and cheerfully broke them.  “No faith with Saxons” was their motto.

These fields, these meadows once were ours,
And sooth by heaven and all its powers,
Think you we will not issue forth,
To spoil the spoiler as we may,
And from the robber rend the prey.

Even the payment of blackmail, so effectual with the Highlanders, did not secure the border counties from these flippant fighters, and in sooth Normans were much too proud for any such evasion of a warrior’s duty.

There, then, our Hubert fleshed his maiden sword, within a week after his arrival at Llanystred Castle; and that in a fierce skirmish, wherein the fighting was all hand to hand, he slew his man.

But in these fights, where every one was brave, there was small opportunity for Hubert to gain personal distinction.  A coward was very rare; as well expect a deer to be born amongst a race of tigers.  There were, it is true, degrees of self devotion, and for a chance of distinguishing himself by self sacrifice Hubert longed.

And thus it came.

He had been sent from the castle on the Wye, which might well be called, like one in Sir Walter’s tales, “Castle Dangerous,” upon an errand to an outpost, and was returning by moonlight along the banks of the stream, there a rushing mountain torrent.  It was a weird scene, the peaks of the Black Mountains rose up into the calm pellucid air of night, the solemn woods lined the further bank of the river, and extended to the bases of the hills.  It was just the time and the hour when the wild, unconquered Celts were likely to make their foray upon the dwellers on the English side of the stream, if they could find a spot where they could cross.

About half a mile from Llanystred Castle, amidst the splash and dash of the water, Hubert distinguished some peculiar and unaccustomed sounds, like the murmur of many voices, in some barbarous tongue, all ll’s and consonants.

He waited and listened.

Just below him roared and foamed the stream, and it so happened that a series of black rocks raised their heads above the swollen waters like still porpoises, at such distances as to afford lithesome people the chance of crossing, dry shod, when the water was low.