had his home, and the gods of the Druid their worship. And musing
amidst these skeletons of the past, lay the doomed son of Pen-Dragon.

Beside him a kind of throne had been raised with stones, and over it
was spread a tattered and faded velvet pall. On this throne sat
Aldyth the Queen; and about the royal pair was still that mockery of a
court which the jealous pride of the Celt king retained amidst all the
horrors of carnage and famine. Most of the officers indeed
(originally in number twenty-four), whose duties attached them to the
king and queen of the Cymry, were already feeding the crow or the
worm. But still, with gaunt hawk on his wrist, the penhebogydd (grand
falconer) stood at a distance; still, with beard sweeping his breast,
and rod in hand, leant against a projecting shaft of the wall, the
noiseless gosdegwr, whose duty it was to command silence in the King's
hall; and still the penbard bent over his bruised harp, which once had
thrilled, through the fair vaults of Caerleon and Rhaldan, in high
praise of God, and the King, and the Hero Dead. In the pomp of gold
dish and vessel [165] the board was spread on the stones for the King
and Queen; and on the dish was the last fragment of black bread, and
in the vessel full and clear, the water from the spring that bubbled
up everlastingly through the bones of the dead city.

Beyond this innermost space, round a basin of rock, through which the
stream overflowed as from an artificial conduit, lay the wounded and
exhausted, crawling, turn by turn, to the lips of the basin, and happy
that the thirst of fever saved them from the gnawing desire of food.
A wan and spectral figure glided listlessly to and fro amidst those
mangled, and parched, and dying groups. This personage, in happier
times, filled the office of physician to the court, and was placed
twelfth in rank amidst the chiefs of the household. And for cure of