if with the reverberations of a spirit's voice, and with them, those sounds no less terrible, the execrations and the maddened cries of struggling men. Old towers built by great chiefs, whose names were still current in the country side, in the song and legend of the mountaineer and the dalesman, had fallen under the iron hand of Cromwell-last relics, glass statues of an expired feudalism, shattered by the genius of democratic fanaticism-and their fall, like the last throbs of a strong man dying, had shaken the land as with an earthquake. Castles, which the peasant who lived near them had been accustomed to consider as eternal as the mountains, those tombstones of former worlds which towered above them-had passed from the scene like the clouds with which their turrets had so long held dark communion. The old rock nests had been pulled down, the birds had flown, the proud descendants of the Cambrian kings—once the glory

of the valleys beneath. were wanderers now, ay, and even beggars in a foreign land.

An unnatural lull had followed the storm thunders, for in these distant and lonely valleys of Merionethshire, where our scene lies, the stray broad sheet of the day had not reached for weeks. But now and then some passing traveller brought word to the anxious listeners at the village inn, that Monk was ruling with a rod of iron, that plots were hatched but to be discovered, and that the Royalists crept to their hidingplaces like birds of night at the approach of day, at which news the Royalist shrugged his shoulders, bit his lips, swore an oath or two in his sleeve, and preserved a very prudent silence, while the Puritan smiled grimly, and uttered, with due twang and emphasis, some text adapted to the occasion.

How could Owen, then, sell his gay treasures in times like these, when the

sour fathers of village maidens thought silken ringlets hooks of the great tempter, and the ribands that adorned them the very snares of Apollyon himself?

It was almost evening-a summer evening-when our friend the pedlar turned from the great road that leads from the eagle-towered city of Caernarvon into the heart of Merionethshire, and trudged away over a steep mountain-path in the direction of Drws y Coed, "the door of the wood," a pass formed by the great granite roots of Snowdon, that stretch forth like the feelers of some giant monster frozen to stone-a spot which, as its name and the legends appertaining thereto indicate, was once covered by dense forests, the haunt of the boar, the deer, and the wolf, where the Welsh kings hunted animals scarce less savage than themselves. In the western sky, "night's great pageant" had commenced; in the horizon, was streaming up a red light as of some burn

ing town, the fainter reflection of which, fainter and calmer as of a dawn before its time, lit the peaks of the eastern mountains, suffusing them with a rosy light, as if the internal fire of a volcano was shining through its stony casket, rendered transparent by some spirit of a bygone religion that still haunted its summit.

On strode manfully the pedlar; encumbered as he was with his heavy pack, he clambered over jutting masses of rock, keeping his eye fixed on the ground, to trace out the ill-defined path which led from one hamlet to another; but one mile led but to another steeper than the last, and still no village in sight. In vain he gazed below on the lakes, as if to see if any cottage was mirrored in those clear depths which now glowed in the purple light, reflecting the transitory splendours so unearthly and so sublime. Wending at last to a small defile that was hemmed in by rocks which seemed to forbid an exit, the weary

man, with an expression of impatience, threw his pack on the ground, placed his pedlar's staff beside it, and first leaning against a mass of lichened rock, finally seated himself upon it, and gradually yielding unconditionally to the overpowering influence of fatigue that overcame him, threw himself at full length upon the ground, resting his head upon the load that had so grievously galled his shoulder. While he thus tarries, reader, let us sketch our friend Griffith more minutely. A broadleafed hat shadowed a good-looking face, whose regular features bore an expression at once of shrewdness and generosity; neglect, eccentricity, or a wish for disguise, not unlikely in those troublous times, had led him to nourish a beard of formidable length, which, mingling with the hair of the upper lip, gave the wearer so wild and perhaps so savage an appearance, that a passerby, forgetful of the conventional form of dress, might have imagined him a British chief rest