ed thunder, rising from some fall and brawling shallow "rapid" of
the river, was the only sound, except the hooting of an owl from some
old ivied building, a ruin apparently, visible on the olive-hued
precipice behind. The russet mass of mountain, bulging, as it were, over
the little range of cots, gave an air of security to their picturesque
white beauty; while silver clouds curled and rolled in masses, grandly
veiling their higher peaks, and sometimes canopied the roofs, many
reddened with wall-flower; the walls also exhibiting streaks of green,
where rains had drenched the vegetating thatch and washed down its tint
of yellow green. Aged trees, green even to the trunks, luxuriant ivy
enveloping them as well as the branches, stretched their huge arms down
the declivity leading to the Tivy, the flashing of whose waters, through
its rich fringe of underwood, caught the eye of any one standing on the
ridge above. A solitary figure, tall and muffled, did stand with his
back in contact with one of these oaks, so as to be hardly
distinguishable from the trunk.

A poet might imagine, looking at a Welsh village by moonlight, thus
embosomed in pastoral mountains, canopied with those silver mists whose
very motion was peace, and lulled by those soft solemn sounds, more
peace-breathing than even silence, that _there_, at least, care never
came; there peace, "if to be found in the world," would be surely found;
and soon that one light moving--that prettier painted door stealthily
opening--would prove that peace confined to the elements only. "Here I
am!" would be groaned to his mind's ear by the ubiquitous, foul fiend,
Care; for thence emerged a female form--_simplex munditiis_--the exact
description of it as to attire--rather tall than otherwise, but its
chief characteristic, a drooping kind of bowed gait, in affecting unison
with a melancholy settled over the pale features, so strongly as to be
visible even by the moon at a very short distance. Brushing away a tear
from each eye, as she held to her breast a little packet of some kind,
as soon as she found (as she imagined) the coast clear, she proceeded,
after fastening her door, toward one of the bowered footpaths leading
to the river. The concealed man looked after her, prepared to follow,
when some belated salmon fisher, his dark coracle, strapped to his back,
nodding over his head, appeared. This lurking personage was nicknamed
"Lewis the Spy" by the country people. He was th