“The mountains, like the plains and vallies,” replied Rhys, “have of course their rough and unsightly portions; but so very dear to me are the sensations connected with our Mountain Land, that I could kiss the sod of its dullest region, when I remember how it came the refuge of our war-worsted forefathers in the days of old, as the waned star of liberty seemed to have vanished forever from our sphere.” Rhys’s patriotic enthusiasm rose as he proceeded. “I could as soon twit my beloved mother with the furrows which time has ploughed on her brows, as censure the homeliest part of our dear mountains, hallowed of old by the tread of freemen, when the despot foreigner usurped the vallies.
“Freedom, amid a cloudy clime,
Erects her mountain throne sublime,
While natives of the vales and plains
Are gall’d with yokes and slavish chains;—
Then shrink we ne’er, unnerved as bann’d,
In the cloudy clime of the Mountain Land.Turban’d in her folds of mist
Our Mountain Land the sky hath kiss’d
While on her brow the native wreath
Of yellow furze and purple heath;
The rural reign her vales command,
And the freemen’s swords of the Mountain Land.”
Twm felt the observations of the curate as a rebuke for his flippancies, and was about to clear himself from all suspicion of lack of nationality; but the latter at that moment looking up at the sun, declared the day so far advanced that he must of necessity instantly mount his horse and ride with speed, so as to meet the vicar of Llandovery at the place appointed; on which, directing Twm in the route he was to take, he rode off and left him to pursue his way at leisure.
After thus parting with Mr. Rhys, Twm made his way alone, wrapped in thought, and looking neither to the right or left, for several miles, but was at length brought to a stand by the discovery that the way he trod had ceased to be either a road or beaten path; and that he was actually pacing the trackless mountain, with the disagreeable conviction that he had gone wrong, without a clue to recover the right way.
Observing a bwlch, or gap, parting the mountains in the distance, where they rose to a considerable elevation, he naturally concluded that the road ran through it. Acting on this opinion, he hurried on, and was much gratified to find his conjecture realized, as a good beaten road presented itself to him. He entered it, and hastened on with the utmost alacrity, till he came to a cottage on the road side, opposite to which was an immense rick of turf, that at a distance looked like a long black barn. He called at the cottage, and asked if he was right in his route to Llandovery, “Right!” squeaked a thin old man who met him at the door, “God bless you young man, you could not be more wrong, as your back is to Llandovery, and you are making straight for Trecastle.”
This was mortifying intelligence; and the old man seeing Twm’s chagrin, asked him to walk in and rest himself, an invitation that he gladly accepted. “What, I suppose you thought to be at Llandovery to hear the great preaching there to day?” said the man’s wife, a little fat woman who was carding wool by the fire. “No,” replied Twm, “I never heard of any preaching that was to be there.” “That’s very odd,” rejoined the old man, “as the whole country has been crowding there, to hear the good Rhys Prichard, the great vicar of Llandovery.” “I have heard he is very popular,” said Twm. “Popular!” screamed the weazon-faced old man, as if indignant of the coldness of our hero’s eulogy, “he is the shining light of our times, and hardly less than a prophet; wisely has he called his divine book the Welshman’s Candle, for it blazes with exceeding brightness, and men find their way by it from the darkness of perdition. When it is known that his health permits him to preach, the country hereabouts is up in swarms, to the distance of two score miles and more. Then, the farmer forsakes his corn-field, the chapman his shop, and every tradesman and artizan quits his calling, to listen to the music of his discourse. Infirmity alone has kept me from going to hear him to-day; but my wife is no better than an infidel, and would rather listen to a profane fidler, or a vagrant harper, than to the finest preacher that ever breathed out a pious discourse.”
Here the little round woman retorted on her spouse, assuring Twm that he was a miserable dreamer, whose brains had been turned by the ravings of fanatical preachers; that some months ago he ran three miles, howling, thinking he was pursued by the foul fiend, when it turned out to be only his own shadow: and that when a patch of the mountain furze was set on a blaze to fertilize the land, nothing could convince him that the world was not on fire, and the day of judgement come, till he caught an ague by hiding himself up to the chin in the river for twelve hours.
All this the old man very indignantly repelled, and vowed that his courage was equal to that of any man breathing.
At this moment the violent galloping of a horse attracted their attention, and in an instant a horse and rider passed the door, but suddenly checking his speed he returned, and calling at the cottage door, asking in a tone of authority if a lady had passed that way towards Llandovery within the last half hour. The old man, trembling as he spoke, protested that no lady had passed for many hours; on which the bluff horseman told him as he valued his life, neither he or his wife should appear on the outside of the cottage door, till he gave them leave. The old man assured him of his entire obedience, when the fellow quietly crossed the road, and effectually concealed himself and horse behind the opposite turf-rick.
Twm, unseen himself, caught a full view of this burley horseman, and instantly knew him. He felt a conviction that in a few minutes a scene was to be acted, in which he was determined to perform himself a conspicuous, if not a principal, part. He asked the timorous old cottager if he possessed such a thing as a long-handled hedge bill-hook, to which the poor dotard, his teeth chattering the while, replied in the negative. On searching the cottage, with the assistance of his mistress, to its great vexation he could find no weapon, but a blunt old hatchet, and a rusty reaping-hook.