"Not that even," said Howel, "lest she learn whither you betake yourself. That none of us must know."
Then Meredith the Bard rose.
"There is need for haste," he said. "I go."
"And I go, too," said Pabo. He looked at the elders with swelling breast and filling eye. "I entrust to you, dear friends and spiritual sons, one more precious to me than life itself." He turned to Griffith: "Prince, God grant it be not for long that you are condemned to fly as the squirrel. God grant that ere long we may hear the cry of the ravens of Dynevor; and when we hear that——"
All present raised their hands—
"We will find the ravens their food."
CHAPTER IX
WHAT MUST BE
Howel the Tall walked slowly to the presbytery, the house of Pabo, that was soon to be his no longer. The tidings that an armed body of men was on its way into the peaceful valley—whose peace was to be forever broken up, so it seemed—had produced a profound agitation. Every one was occupied: some removing their goods, and themselves preparing to retire to the hovel on the summer pastures; those who had no hafod to receive them were concealing their little treasures.