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 the agent, newly appointed, to inspect the condition of a once fine but most neglected estate, which had recently come into possession of a "Nabob," as they called him--a gentleman who had left Wales a boy, and was now on his voyage home to take possession of a dilapidated mansion called Talylynn. Lewis, his forerunner and plenipotentiary, was the dread and hate of the alarmed tenants. He had already ejected from his stewardship a good but rather indolent old man, John Bevan, who had grown old in the service of the former "squire;" and besides kept watch over the doings on the farms in an occult and treacherous manner, prowling round their "folds" by dusk, and often listening to conversations by concealing himself. Such was the man who now accosted the humble fisherman. Reverentially, as if to the terrible landlord himself, the peasant bared his head to his sullen representative. "Who is that young woman?" he enquired, sternly, though well knowing who she was. "Dim Saesneg," answered the man, bowing. "None of your Dim Saesneg to me, fellow," rejoined Lewis, sternly. "Did not I hear you swearing in good English at a _Saesyn_ (Englishman or Saxon) yesterday?"