Twm, unseen himself, caught a full view of this burley horseman, and instantly knew him. He felt a conviction that in a few minutes a scene was to be acted, in which he was determined to perform himself a conspicuous, if not a principal, part. He asked the timorous old cottager if he possessed such a thing as a long-handled hedge bill-hook, to which the poor dotard, his teeth chattering the while, replied in the negative. On searching the cottage, with the assistance of his mistress, to its great vexation he could find no weapon, but a blunt old hatchet, and a rusty reaping-hook. The canter of a light horse now struck his ear; his heart caught fire at the sound, and with almost fierce vehemence he called to the people of the cottage, “Give me some weapon in the name of God: to defend you and myself from having our throats cut;” but it only increased their terror and confusion. In an instant, a lady on a slight white horse was opposite to the cottage, when the horseman, darting forward from behind the turf-rick, and producing pistols, demanded her money. The lady protested, in the most piteous and earnest tone, that she had accidentally left her purse behind, and must be indebted to a friend at Llandovery, should she fail to meet her husband there, for some small change. “I’ll not be disappointed for nothing,” cried the ruffian, “Dio the devil is not to be fooled, and my pretty lady of Ystrad Fîn, I have depended on a good booty from you to-day, so that unless in two minutes you strip, and give me every article in which you are clothed, a pistol bullet shall pass through your delicate body.” The lady, with tears entreated him to be merciful, promising a future recompence; but the scoundrel laughed scornfully in her face, and cocked his pistol, on which she uttered a loud scream and fainted, when he immediately approached to strip and rifle her. Our hero, whose blood was boiling with honest indignation, now started up from behind the lady’s horse, and stood on a small bank raised to separate the cottage yard from the road, struck the highwayman an astounding blow on the temples, with a stout hedge-stake grasped with both hands, and repeated the violent action till it brought the desperado senseless, and covered with blood, to the ground. After the first terrible blow, confounded as he was, he instinctively presented his pistol at random, but Twm struck him heavily on the extended arm, which caused it to fall, and swing dead by his side, like a withered oak branch smote by the thunderbolt.