Much relieved that the boys should escape fine or imprisonment, Linda emptied the fish from the basket on to the grass, and, seizing Sylvia's hand, ran as fast as she could up the bank to where they had left the donkey tied to the gate, followed by Oswald and Artie, who only stopped to pick up their shoes and stockings by the way. They were glad to place the stone wall between themselves and the angry gamekeeper, and as soon as the boys had put on their footgear, they loosed Teddie, and started off once more on the road towards Pen y Gaer.
"What a horrid cross man!" said Sylvia. "I peeped over the wall just now, and he was still standing there, and shook his fist at me."
"I didn't know any of the water was preserved," said Oswald, who felt sore at the remembrance. "Well, he needn't think we want to go there again after his old fish; they aren't such treasures as he supposes."
"Sour grapes!" laughed Artie.
"Oh, shut up! It was you who suggested tickling them first!" said Oswald, who was thoroughly out of temper, and ready to quarrel with anybody.
Artie, however, was a good-natured little fellow, and had the tact simply to whistle, and leave his brother to get over his ill humour. As nobody was riding the donkey, he mounted it himself, and, persuading Linda and Sylvia to try what he called "the double-smack method", indulged in a splendid gallop, which did not meet with so disastrous a termination as the last one.
They had almost reached the goal of their walk, and, taking Teddie to a farm which stood near, they asked the woman to allow them to leave him there while they scaled the summit of Pen y Gaer, and to have her kettle boiling by the time they came back. Their path now led away from the road, and over a stile on to the heather. It was a stiff climb, and made more difficult by the thick gorse through which they were obliged to push their way, but the view from the top was sufficient compensation for any trouble they had in arriving there. On one hand they could see the whole extent of the valley from Bettws y Coed to Conway, and even the houses on the promenade at Llandudno fully ten miles away; while on the other stretched the beautiful moors leading to the gloomy hollow of Lake Dulyn, behind which the mountain ridges showed purple and jagged against the sky. All around they could trace the ruins of the old British fort, great piles of stones that must have been rolled there with incredible labour, perhaps by the very tribe which had reared the Druids' circle on the slope of Tal y fan.
"Some of the Welsh people say a giant put them here," said Oswald, who had recovered his spirits; "or I'm not sure if it wasn't King Arthur himself. At any rate he took a tremendous jump down the hillside, and left his footprint on a rock in the stream below there. He must have worn a No. 15 shoe, to judge by the size."
"Uncle Frank made up a ridiculous story once," said Linda. "It was all about the black bull of Llyn Dulyn, and how it came one night to Garth Avon, and tapped at Mother's window with its horns, and said that one of the little bulls had met with an accident to its eye, and he'd heard that she had a whole bottle of bulls'-eyes, so would she please bring some, and come at once with him and cure it. The village people are always fetching Mother like that to see their children, and she's simply terrified of bulls, so he told it just on purpose to tease her."
"Talking of bulls'-eyes makes me think of tea," said Artie. "I'm sure that old woman's kettle must be boiling now. I vote we go down and see. Let us try this other part of the hill; it'll be far quicker than scrambling through the gorse again."