"Nay, not thou; I should have taken thy men in leaps!" "Another time," said Rogier. "The man we seek has run into our hands." Then to the boy: "Where is he hiding?" Goronwy understood the question by the action of his hands, and replied in the few words he had picked up of French, "Là--maison, Howel." "He shall be swung at once," said Rogier; "and then the first object on which the eyes of all will rest when they come out of their houses with the morrow's sun will be this Archpriest they have been hiding from me." "Nay," said Cadell, "that may not be. I have orders to the contrary under the hand and seal of the bishop." He unfolded the instructions. Rogier cursed. "Well," said he, "Pabo to me matters but little--so long as I lay my hand on Morwen." CHAPTER XVIII CAREG CENNEN Before dawn Pabo was on his way, bound to Careg Cennen, riding between four soldiers. He had been taken in the house of Howel. It had been his intention to deliver himself up early on the morrow; but he was forestalled. He regretted this, for more reasons than one. He had been unable to make final arrangements for the protection of Morwen, and he had been unable to communicate with Howel as he desired, relative to the secret of the treasure in the Roman gold-mines. The owls were hooting and night-jars screaming as the cavalcade proceeded along the Sarn Helen towards the broad valley of the Towy by that of its tributary the _Dulais_. As they reached the main river, the dawn was lightening behind the Brecknock Mountains, and the water sliding down toward the sea shone cold as steel. With daylight men were met upon the road, and occasionally a woman; the latter invariably, the former for the most part fled at the sight of the armed men. But some, less timorous remained, and recognizing the Archpriest, saluted him with respect and with exclamations of lamentation at seeing him in the hands of the common enemy. At Llandeilo the river was crossed, and Pabo was conveyed up a steep ascent into the tributary valley of the Cennen. But this stream makes a great loop, and the troopers thrust their horses over the spur of hill about which the torrent sweeps. Presently the castle came in view, very new and white, constructed of limestone, on a crag of the same substance, that rises precipitously for five hundred feet sheer out the ravine and the brawling stream that laves the foot of the crag. After a slight dip the track led up a bold stony rise to the castle gate. The situation is of incomparable wildness and majesty. Beyond the ravine towers up the Mynydd Ddu, the Black Mountain, clothed in short heather, to cairn-topped ridges, two thousand feet above the sea, the flanks seamed with descending threads of water; while further south over its shoulder are seen purple hills in the distance. A solitary sycamore here and there alone stands against the wind on the ridge about which the Cennen whispers far below.