"Thane, when we took you, it was Owen of Cornwall for whom we waited. We were not minding you at all until we saw that we might hurt him through you."
"That I suppose. I know that you laid wait for Owen the prince."
"Ay, for you know the Welsh and heard all that we said. But listen, Thane, this is it. Eight of the friends of Morgan had sworn the death of Owen that morning, and it was the leader of them who set us on. He was not there, for he waited on another road."
"Were you one of the eight?"
"That I am not," he said. "I and my men were but hired, as Morgan was wont to hire us now and then. When we took you methought that it was well for me, for through you I might be inlawed again, even as I told you."
"Who was this leader?" I asked, heeding this last speech not at all.
"Tregoz of the Dart, men call him, for he holds lands thereon. Also there are these of the great men of Cornwall and Dyvnaint."
He called over the names of the other seven, and I repeated them that I should not forget. The only one that I had heard before was that of Tregoz. The outlaws had spoken of him, and now I remembered him as one of those who had seemed loudest in welcome to Owen when he came to Norton. So I told Evan, and he nodded.
"I heard him boast of the same," he said, and I believed him for the way in which he said it.
"How do they think to slay Owen, and wherefore?" I asked, and my blood ran cold at the thought of the treachery that was round him.