After we had descended the avenue some way, John Jones began to look about him, and getting on the bank on the left side, disappeared. We went on, and in a little time saw him again beckoning to us some way farther down, but still on the bank. When we drew nigh to him, he bade us get on the bank; we did so, and followed him some way amidst furze and lyng. All of a sudden he exclaimed, “There it is!” We looked, and saw a large figure standing on a pedestal. On going up to it we found it to be a Hercules leaning on his club,—indeed a copy of the Farnese Hercules, as we gathered from an inscription in Latin partly defaced. We felt rather disappointed, as we expected that it would have turned out to be the figure of some huge Welsh champion of old. We, however, said nothing to our guide. John Jones, in order that we might properly appreciate the size of the statue by contrasting it with his own body, got upon the pedestal and stood up beside the figure, to the elbow of which his head little more than reached. I told him that in my country, the eastern part of Lloegr, I had seen a man quite as tall as the statue. “Indeed, sir,” said he; “who is it?” “Hales, the Norfolk giant,” I replied, “who has a sister seven inches shorter than himself, who is yet seven inches taller than any man in the county when her brother is out of it.” When John Jones got down he asked me who the man was whom the statue was intended to represent. “Erchwl,” I replied, “a mighty man of old, who with his club cleared the country of thieves, serpents, and monsters.” I now proposed that we should return to Llangollen, whereupon we retraced our steps, and had nearly reached the farm-house of the castle, when John Jones said that we had better return by the low road, by doing which we should see the castle-lodge, and also its gate, which was considered one of the wonders of Wales. We followed his advice, and passing by the front of the castle northwards, soon came to the lodge. The lodge had nothing remarkable in its appearance, but the gate, which was of iron, was truly magnificent. On the top were two figures of wolves, which John Jones supposed to be those of foxes. The wolf of Chirk is not intended to be expressive of the northern name of its proprietor, but is the armorial bearing of his family by the maternal side, and originated in one Ryred, surnamed Blaidd, or Wolf, from his ferocity in war; from whom the family, which only assumed the name of Middleton in the beginning of the thirteenth century, on the occasion of its representative marrying a rich Shropshire heiress of that name, traces descent. The wolf of Chirk is a Cambrian, not a Gothic wolf, and though “a wolf of battle,” is the wolf not of Biddulph, but of Ryred. CHAPTER LV A Visitor—Apprenticeship to the Law—Croch Daranau Lope de Vega—No life like the Traveller’s.