<afe. 35 



tant thunder ; he heard, too, the one loud voice which 

 told that his friend had fallen. 



Owen Glendour returned to his castle in the Vale of 

 Glyndwrdwey : it was situated amid the wildest and the 

 sternest scenery, beside the torrent's roar, and surrounded 

 with all the magnificence of rock and fell. There did he 

 soon assemble to his standard those ardent spirits who 

 preferred death to slavery, and who vowed that the blue 

 hills and the pleasant valleys of their fathers' land should 

 never be subjected to the yoke of a usurper. Daring 

 adventures, and strange escapes by flood and field, marked 

 his onward course. The English regarded him with 

 superstitious dread ; the Welch looked to him as one 

 possessed of more than mortal power ; and thus during 

 fifteen years did he resist the aggressions of a monarch, 

 whose prowess had long been known, the efforts too of a 

 chivalrous nobility, and a martial people. 



Yet Glendour was not designed by nature for a life of 

 daring hardihood and of murderous intent. He was 

 amiable and beloved in private life, and, his parents hav- 

 ing designed him for the bar, he was qualifying himself 

 as an able lawyer, when intelligence was brought that 

 Henry IV. had granted a large portion of his paternal 

 acres to Lord Grey of Rhuthin, that treacherous noble- 

 man who had long sought to prejudice the king against 

 him. Owen Glendour closed the book that lay before 

 him ; he declared that a descendant of the Princes of 

 Powys was not to be so treated ; and having drawn his 



