After Twm had treated all the maidens with bread and cheese and ale, and dismissed them on their journey, Wat, in great agony of mind, exclaimed, “Oh God, where shall I fly! all my supposed security I find but a dream, and misery alone awaits me. When I told you the tale of my enormities, I kept back the relation of one crime, a dreadful one! which, lost as I am, I felt averse to acknowledge, and too heart-smote with the consciousness of its atrocity, to turn to it my most secret thought—’twas a deed of blood, the crime of murder. You remember a tall, thin, skeleton-like man, generally dressed in an entire suit of grey, who lived in a cottage on the mountain, in the neighbourhood of Tregaron, known by the nick-name of Stalking Simon the Moon-calf. This man was known to be a spy employed and paid by all the neighbouring farmers. His habits were, to sleep all day, and to spend the night on the hills, watching to identify the hedge-pluckers and sheep-stealers. Many poor persons who depended on their nightly excursions, for fuel, while they deemed themselves unobserved of any human being, cutting down a tree, or drawing dry wood from an old hedge, would suddenly find themselves in the presence of Stalking Simon. So instantaneous was his appearance, as to startle his victims with the idea of an apparition suddenly sprung up through the ground, as his approach was never seen till close upon them. ‘’Tis only me, neighbour,’ would be the hypocrite’s reply, ‘searching for my stray pony:’ but when two persons had been executed, and three transported, on his evidence, the nature of his employment became known, and he was execrated by the whole country. One moonlight night, as I was skinning a fine stolen wether, which I had suspended and spread out on an old storm-beaten thorn, in a field adjoining the mountain, easy in mind, and so fearless of danger that I whistled in a half-hushed manner, as I followed my illicit occupation, a circumstance took place that wrought a violent change in the tone of my mind. My thoughts ran on the whimsicality of the idea of selling a portion of this very mutton to the rightful owner, on the morrow, which was market day, and laughing inwardly at the thought; all at once, Stalking Simon, with a single stride, moved from behind a mossy elm, grey as his own suit, and stood before me. My blood curdled with the sudden transition from mirth to terror; but when the stone-hearted wretch made the old Judas-like reply, ‘It is only me neighbour, searching for my stray pony,’ I knew the amount of my danger, and my terror changed to savage ferocity against the vile informer who had ruined so many of my friends and neighbours. In the fever of my hatred I darted on him, grasped his collar with one hand, and with the other stabbed him to the heart.”