resist the attempts of a dozen strong men, even had he afterward been
able to escape from the house unseen, unheard. The window was placed
(as is common in old Welsh houses) over the fire-place; with
branching chimneys on either hand, forming a sort of projection on
the outside. By this outlet his escape was easy, even had he been
less determined and desperate than he was. And when he had
descended, with a little care, a little winding, he might elude all
observation and pursue his original intention of going to Ty Glas.

The storm had abated, and watery sunbeams were gilding the bay, as
Owen descended from the window, and, stealing along in the broad
afternoon shadows, made his way to the little plateau of green turf
in the garden at the top of a steep precipitous rock, down the abrupt
face of which he had often dropped, by means of a well-secured rope,
into the small sailing-boat (his father's present, alas! in days gone
by) which lay moored in the deep sea-water below. He had always kept
his boat there, because it was the nearest available spot to the
house; but before he could reach the place--unless, indeed, he
crossed a broad sun-lighted piece of ground in full view of the
windows on that side of the house, and without the shadow of a single
sheltering tree or shrub--he had to skirt round a rude semicircle of
underwood, which would have been considered as a shrubbery had any
one taken pains with it. Step by step he stealthily moved along--
hearing voices now, again seeing his father and stepmother in no
distant walk, the Squire evidently caressing and consoling his wife,
who seemed to be urging some point with great vehemence, again forced
to crouch down to avoid being seen by the cook, returning from the
rude kitchen-garden with a handful of herbs. This was the way the
doomed heir of Bodowen left his ancestral house for ever, and hoped
to leave behind him his doom. At length he reached the plateau--he