“At Llancavan a Lord of Builth, wearied with the chase, and overtaken by darkness, entered the church with his hounds and spent the night. In the morning his hounds were mad and he was blind. In his remorse for his act of sacrilege he had himself conveyed to Palestine, and there led on horseback and fully armed in the front of the fighting-line against the Saracens, who very promptly killed him.”[3] [Footnote 3: Bradley, “Highways and Byways of South Wales.”] Another legend says that once a miracle happened in Rhayader itself. A farmer had been seized by the owner of the castle on a charge of sheep-stealing, and was confined in the dungeon thereof. His poor wife, knowing that the gaolers were open to bribery, but having neither money nor goods, stole from the church the funeral bell, which it was the ancient custom to ring at the head of the procession to the grave. She took this to Rhayader, and offered it to the gaolers on condition that they should release her husband. But they took the sacred bell and then refused to let him go. That night, says the legend, the whole town was destroyed by fire, save only the wall of the castle on which the bell had been hung. From Rhayader the Valley of the Elan, a tributary of the Wye, runs westward, and becomes a scene of great importance from one point of view. The valley is narrow, pent up among the hills, which fling down into it their numberless mountain streams. Here a great dam has been built, which pens up the water into two great lakes, and various smaller reservoirs, from which the city of Birmingham draws its water-supply. Fancy 60,000,000 gallons of water a day being carried to Birmingham, seventy miles away! These Welsh valleys certainly do their part towards keeping the great dirty manufacturing towns of England clean and sweet. CHAPTER XII THE GREAT PLYNLIMMON “Cardigan is a country to itself,” says one who knows Wales well. Except, indeed, for the towns on the coast, Lampeter, with its college, and a famous abbey in the south, the whole country has been described as a “mountain wilderness.” But since some of us prefer such untrodden wastes to those parts that have become merely playgrounds for the English tourist, we will pay it a visit to-day. At the north-eastern corner of the county stands Plynlimmon, the home of the Severn, the Wye, and many a smaller river which ploughs its way through the wild region we are traversing. And let us note, by the way, that, since railways and even good roads are unknown except on the very fringe of this district, our best method of travelling will be on foot. [Illustration: THE WYE NEAR RHAYADER. _Page 62._]