the monk at least will have eyes to see, and tongue
to relate. But to thee I confide this much;--I know already, that
Gryffyth's strongholds are not his walls and his towers, but the
superstition of our men, and the despair of his own. I could win those
heights, as I have won heights as cloudcapt, but with fearful loss of my
own troops, and the massacre of every foe. Both I would spare, if I
may."

"Yet thou hast not shown such value for life, in the solitudes I passed,"
said the knight bluntly.

Harold turned pale, but said firmly, "Sire de Graville, a stern thing is
duty, and resistless is its voice. These Welchmen, unless curbed to
their mountains, eat into the strength of England, as the tide gnaws into
a shore. Merciless were they in their ravages on our borders, and
ghastly and torturing their fell revenge. But it is one thing to grapple
with a foe fierce and strong, and another to smite when his power is
gone, fang and talon. And when I see before me the faded king of a great
race, and the last band of doomed heroes, too few and too feeble to make
head against my arms,--when the land is already my own, and the sword is
that of the deathsman, not of the warrior,--verily, Sir Norman, duty
releases its iron tool, and man becomes man again."

"I go," said the Norman, inclining his head low as to his own great Duke,
and turning to the door; yet there he paused, and looking at the ring
which he had placed on his finger, he said, "But one word more, if not
indiscreet--your answer may help argument, if argument be needed. What
tale lies hid in this token?"

Harold coloured and paused a moment, then answered:

"Simply this. Gryffyth's wife, the lady Aldyth, a Saxon by birth, fell
into my hands. We were storming Rhadlan, at the farther end of the isle;
she was there. We war not against women; I feared the license of my own
soldiers, and I sent the lady to Gryffyth. Aldyth gave me this ring on
parting; and I bade her tell Gryffyth that whenever, at the hour of his
last peril and sorest need, I sent that ring back to him, he might hold
it the pledge of his life."

"Is this lady, think you, in the stronghold with her lord?"

"I am not sure, but I fear yes," answered Harold.

"Yet one word: And if Gryffyth refuse, despite all warning?"

Harold's eyes drooped.

"If so, he dies; but not by the Saxon sword. God and our lady speed
you!"

CHAPTER V.

On the height called Pen-y-Dinas (or "Head of t