I could stand no more. With one bound I passed from behind my bushes in through the back door of the house—
“Nancy, hang those spoons!” I spoke in Welsh, and I fear my expression was still more forcible. “Come this minute, I’ll wait no longer.”
“Why, who asked you to wait?” said Ann George, ungratefully. “I thought you’d be half-way to Goodwick ere this.”
At this moment her speech was interrupted by a sound as of thunder at the front door, while the parlour window came flying into the room before the butt-ends of French muskets. Even Ann George thought it now high time to take her leave.
So we departed as quickly and as silently as possible through the back door, while the front door was being shivered to atoms, and the enemy was pouring into the house over its remains. Quickly, indeed, we went now and the falling night favoured us; the enemy’s own noise too rendered the slight addition of our footfalls totally unobservable. All the space between Trehowel and the cliffs swarmed with Frenchmen, and the uproar was bewildering.
“They’ll make short work with your master’s ale, Nan,” I gasped, as we ran along under the cover of the earthen banks topped with gorse.
“Aye, and of the wine and the spirits, and of all the poor young master’s wedding feast. Oh, indeed, I wish I had known they were coming when I was baking those pies and brewing that ale!”
I did not waste my breath by inquiring the reason of this aspiration, for the hill was rather heavy on my lungs, and her meaning was obvious. In a very short time we had reached Brestgarn, the abode of a worthy divine, the Rev. David Bowen, whom we found about to depart hurriedly, he having been no quicker to hear the alarming tidings than his neighbour at Trehowel; but, having heard it, he and his family were off for the interior as fast as horses and fright could take them. Only one of his servants, a man named Llewelyn, volunteered to stay behind, to keep, as far as in him lay, an eye upon his master’s place and goods.
“Let us go to the top of Carnunda,” suggested this man. “We can see everything from there.”
Carnunda is a rock situated just above most things in this region; more especially just under it lies the tiny village and church of Llanunda—Unda being manifestly a saint, though I cannot truthfully say I ever heard anything about him—or her.