"It is not known. Up to her fifteenth year she enjoyed a nourishing health. Suddenly she began to languish, grew ill, and barely in her sixteenth year, her light went out, in the arms of her father, who never ceased weeping for her. But this is quite enough about the daughters of Charles the Great. Once more, will you or will you not, endeavor to cause Morvan to abandon a resolution that can have for its only effect the ruin of this country? You are silent--do you refuse?" Absorbed in the thoughts that the fate of the ill-starred Thetralde had started in his mind, Vortigern remained mute and melancholy. His thoughts flew to the young girl who died so young, and the touching remembrance of whom had long remained alive with him. Impatient at the prolonged silence of the Breton, the abbot put his hand on Vortigern's shoulder, and repeated his question: "I ask you, yes or no, will you endeavor to cause Morvan to renounce his insensate resolution?" "Your King wants war; he shall have war." And Vortigern, relapsing into his own meditations, rode silently beside Witchaire until the two reached the city of Guenhek. There Vortigern entrusted the guidance of the abbot to an experienced guide, and while the messenger of Louis the Pious proceeded towards the frontier of Brittany, the brother of Noblede hastened back and rejoined his wife Josseline at the house of Morvan. CHAPTER IV. THE DEFILE OF GLEN-CLAN. The defile of Glen-Clan is the only practicable passage across the last links of the Black Mountains--a mountain chain that constitutes a veritable girdle of granite as a natural protection to the heart of Brittany. The defile of Glen-Clan is so narrow that a wagon can barely thread it; it is so steep that six yoke of oxen are barely able to drag a wagon up its craggy incline, from the top of which a stone of considerable size would roll rapidly down to the bottom of the pass--a pass cut, like the bed of a mountain torrent, at the feet of immense rocks that rise on either side perpendicular over a hundred feet in the air.