"Let them be," he said; "they will but go to the men down the valley, and will be caught there. Come, we must get hence."
He fairly dragged me with him towards the glen, and it was not until we were out of the circle of cliffs round the pool and picking our way among the boulders of the water course, that he spoke again.
"That is better," he said,--"one can breathe here. I do not care if I never set eyes on that place again, and indeed I hope we need not. Now we have to find Owen as quickly as we may."
"What of the two men?"
"One turned on us, and we slew him perforce. The other Evan has tied up safely, though it took us all our time to catch him. I left Evan trying to make him speak."
I wondered in what way he was trying, but the path grew steeper and steeper, and the plash of water falling among the stones made it hard to hear. We went on and on, ever upward, until the walls of the narrow glen widened, and at last we were on a barren hillside, across which the little stream found its way in a belt of green grass and fern and bog from farther heights yet, and there I looked for Evan. The path reappeared here again, and it went slanting across the hill and over its shoulder, hardly more than a sheep track as it was. And here lay the body of the slain man.
"Over the hill crest," Howel said, noting my look around. "The man ran across this track. Did you hear what Morfed said to them?"
"No, I heard him call, of course, but his tongue is unknown to me."
"It was the ancient British, I think. I heard a word or two here and there, but few of those we use yet. I heard more that are written in our oldest writings, and few enough of them. But what he said to his men was plain enough, happily. He bade them kill the captive to amend the wrong done. I do not know what the wrong was."
I knew then that Owen had had a narrow escape, and but for the fleetness of foot of Evan he would surely have been slain. I told Howel of what had passed while he was absent, and so we came to the hilltop, and I saw a little below me the white robes of the captive, and Evan sitting by him, resting on his spear. He rose up as we came to him.