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for riding to Shrewsbury? To meet King Henry?"
      "I am going," she said with deliberation, and rising from her chair to be taller than he, "to confide your father's cause and yours to King Henry's hands, and ask him for justice. Which you well know we have not had and shall not have from any here in Gwynedd. The English in arms will restore us our rights. I am resolved to stake all on this throw. We have been disinherited and insulted long enough. I will have your father and your brother out of prison and restored to their own by the means that offers."
      "You cannot have understood what you are doing," he said. "You could not talk so else. The king of England is preparing now, this very minute, to attack our country, our people. You want to make our right in Welsh law one more weapon on the English side, to slaughter Welshmen? Your own kin? You will be siding with the enemy!"
      "You talk like a child," she said sharply, "and a foolish child! I have waited long enough for Gwynedd to do justice to my lord, your father, and talk of enemies is hollow talk to me. We are disinherited, against all law. I am appealing to an overlaw, and make no doubt but it will hear me, and do right."
      "You cannot do right to my father or any," he cried, blazing up like a tall flame, "by doing wrong to Gwynedd! To Wales!"
      "You talk of fantasies," she overbore him, looming against him like a tower, "while your father rots in Criccieth, a reality, deprived of what is justly his. And you dare talk to me of right! We are going, and tonight. Go, sir, do as you are bidden, go and make ready, and no more words. I did not send for you to teach me my duty, I know it too well."
      Long before this I would gladly have crept away if I could, but I dared not move for fear of reminding them that I was there. And even he, I thought, wavered and blanched a little before her, for in his father's absence she was the law here, and he was still two years short of his manhood, and could not act against her will. Yet I think now he did not give back at all, and even his hesitation was nothing but a hurried searching in his unpractised mind for words which might convince without offending.
      "Mother," he said, low and passionately, "I do know my father's case, and know he asks but what he feels his right. But I tell you, if I were in his place, rather than get my sovereignty at the hands of King Henry, I would make my full submission to my uncle David as his loyal vassal, and put myself and every man I had into arms to fight for him against England. There should be no factions here when a war threatens, but only one cause, Wales. Do not go! Go rather to Criccieth, and beg my father to remember his own father, and the greatness he gave to Gwynedd, and urge him to offer the oath of fealty to his brother, and come out and fight beside him. Even at his own cost, yes! But I swear it would not cost him so high as you will make it cost him if you go on with this. Do not go, to make traitors of us all!"
      She had heard him thus far only for want of breath and words to silence him, and found no argument, for they had no common ground on which to argue. But then she struck him, on the word she could not endure. The clash of her palm against his cheek was loud, and the silence after it louder, until she found a laboured, furious voice to break it.
      "Do you dare speak so to me? You have been too long and too often at your uncle's court, it seems! You had better take care how you use the word traitor in this house, for it may well echo back upon your own head. You have been spoiled at Aber! They have bought you, foolish child as you are. Now let me hear no more from you, but go and make ready. You are the eldest son of this house at liberty, and should be doing your duty as its head."
      He stood unmoving, his eyes fixed upon her angry face, and he had grown pale under the sunbrown, so that the marks of her fingers burned clear and red upon his cheek.