ny
quarrel between him and the prisoner? He said there had been no quarrel,
but that he had refused to drink with the prisoner when he requested him,
which he had done very frequently, and had more than once told him that
he did not wish for his acquaintance. The prisoner, on being asked,
after the usual caution, whether he had anything to say, said that he
merely wished to mark the man but not to kill him. The surgeon of the
place deposed to the nature of the wound, and on being asked his opinion
with respect to the state of the prisoner's mind, said that he believed
that he might be labouring under a delusion. After the prisoner's bloody
weapon and coat had been produced he was committed.

It was generally said that the prisoner was disordered in his mind; I
held my tongue, but judging from his look and manner I saw no reason to
suppose that he was any more out of his senses than I myself, or any
person present, and I had no doubt that what induced him to commit the
act was rage at being looked down upon by a quondam acquaintance, who was
rising a little in the world, exacerbated by the reflection that the
disdainful quondam acquaintance was one of the Saxon race, against which
every Welshman entertains a grudge more or less virulent, which, though
of course, very unchristianlike, is really, brother Englishman, after the
affair of the long knives, and two or three other actions of a somewhat
similar character of our noble Anglo-Saxon progenitors, with which all
Welshmen are perfectly well acquainted, not very much to be wondered at.

CHAPTER LIII

The Dylluan--The Oldest Creatures.

Much rain fell about the middle of the month; in the intervals of the
showers I occasionally walked by the banks of the river which speedily
became much swollen; it was quite terrible both to the sight and ear near
the "Robber's Leap;" there were breakers above the higher stones at least
five feet high and a roar around almost sufficient "to scare a hundred
men." The pool of Lingo was strangely altered; it was no longer the
quiet pool which it was in summer, verifying the words of the old Welsh
poet that the deepest pool of the river is always the stillest in the
summer and of the softest sound, but a howling turbid gulf, in which
branches of trees, dead animals and rubbish were whirling about in the
wildest confusion. The nights were generally less rainy than the days,
and sometimes by the pallid glimmer of the moon I wou