rymen. His manners were courteous in the
extreme, and his authority over his followers absolute. They not only
reverenced him as their prince, the representative of their ancient
kings, and their leader in war, but as one endowed with supernatural
power.

The bards had fanned this feeling to the utmost, by their songs of
marvels and portents at his birth, and by attributing to him a control
even over the elements. This belief was not only of great importance to
him, as binding his adherents closer to him; but it undoubtedly
contributed to his success, from the fact of its being fully shared in
by the English soldiery; who assigned it as the cause of the
exceptionally bad weather that had been experienced, in each of the
three expeditions into the country, and of the failure to accomplish
anything of importance against him.

This side of the character of Glendower puzzled Oswald. Several times,
when talking to him, he distinctly claimed supernatural powers; and
from the tone in which he spoke, and the strange expression his face at
this time assumed, Oswald was convinced that he sincerely believed that
he did possess these powers. Whether he originally did so; or whether
it had arisen from the adulation of the bards, the general belief in
it, and the successes he had gained; Oswald could not determine. Later,
when Glendower sullied his fair fame by the most atrocious massacres,
similar to that which had already taken place at the storming of New
Radnor--atrocities that seemed not only purposeless, but at utter
variance with the courtesy and gentleness of his bearing--Oswald came
to believe that his brain had, to some extent, become unhinged by
excitement, flattery, and superstition.

At the end of the fortnight Roger's wound, although not completely
healed, was in such a state that it permitted his sitting on horseback,
and Oswald became anxious to be off. Glendower, who was about to set
out to harass the rear of the army, as it retired from Cardiganshire,
at once offered to send a strong escort with him; as it would have been
dangerous, in the extreme, to have attempted to traverse the country
without such a protection. Two excellent horses, that had been captured
in the engagement with the English, were handed over to him, for his
own use and that of Roger. Oswald's own armour was returned to him, and
he was pleased to find that it had been carefully attended to, and was
as brightly burnished as when it came into hi