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“Why, look you,” Richard returned, “I have garnered so much that I do not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you take sides between Henry and myself. I tell you frankly that neither of us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, create anything save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking disaster. Nay, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, depend upon it, to the burden of Fools All. For I am as liberally endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, performances, instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least, impossible.”

“I have known the thought,” said Owain–“though rarely since I found the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, my Grunyd, was murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than the others, people said…. You are as yet the empty scabbard, powerless alike for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword, sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we are as gods.”

“Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms.”

“We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at all.”

“And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil.”

“I greatly fear,” said Owain with a sigh, “lest it may be your irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike.”

So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of Caerdyf, while at Caer Idion Richard Holland tranquilly abode for some three weeks. There was in this place only Caradawc (the former shepherd), his wife Alundyne, and their sole daughter Branwen. They gladly perceived Sire Richard was no more a peasant than he was a curmudgeon; as Caradawc observed: “It is perfectly apparent that the robe of Padarn Beisrudd would fit him as a glove does the hand, but we will ask no questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute the orderings of Owain Glyndwyr.”

They did not; and later day by day would Richard Holland drive the flocks to pasture near the Severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his lute. He grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; and its long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing things and with poignant bird-noises, and the tranquillity of these meadows, that were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through many fruitless and incurious hours.

Each day at noon would Branwen bring his dinner, and sometimes chat with him while he ate. After supper he would discourse to Branwen of remote kingdoms, wherethrough he had ridden at adventure, as the wind veers, among sedate and alien peoples who adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him many curious tales from the Red Book of Hergest–as of Gwalchmai, and Peredur, and Geraint, in each one of whom she had presently discerned an inadequate forerunnership of Richard’s existence.

This Branwen was a fair wench, slender as a wand, and, in a harmless way, of a bold demeanor twin to that of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence of suspicion. Happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy lady of old, the wife of King Matholwch, for this Branwen, too, had a white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver coin which is a little worn. Her eyes were large and brilliant, colored like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much cornfloss, only more brightly yellow and of immeasurably finer texture. In full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the surface of a peach, but the underlying cool pink of them was rather that of a cloud, Richard decided. In all, a taking morsel! though her shapely hands were hard with labor, and she rarely laughed; for, as in recompense, her heart was tender and ignorant of discontent, and she rarely ceased to smile as over some peculiar and wonderful secret which she intended, in due time, to share with you alone. Branwen had many lovers, and preferred among them young Gwyllem ap Llyr, a portly lad, who was handsome enough, for all his tiny and piggish eyes, and sang divinely.