Poor Branwen! it was an unfortunate day for her when, in her youthful ignorance and recklessness, she took to the wild woods, resolved to follow Bladud to his destination and secretly wait there and watch over him like a guardian angel, as it were, until the terrible disease should lay him on his deathbed, when she would reveal herself and nurse him to the end!

 

Let not the reader suppose there was any lack of maiden modesty in this resolve. It must be borne in mind that Branwen was little more than a child in experience; that she was of an age at which the world, with all its affairs, is enveloped in a halo of romance; that her soul had been deeply stirred by the story of the rescue of the leprous old woman, and her pity powerfully aroused by the calm, though hopeless, tones of the doomed man when he spoke of his blighted prospects. Rather than leave him to die in absolute solitude she would sacrifice everything, and, in spite of infection and disfigurement, and the horrible nature of a disease which eats away the features before it kills, she would soothe his dying hours. Besides this, it must be remembered that our ancestors’ notions of propriety were somewhat different from ours, and—well, it was about eight hundred years B.C!

 

Whether love was a factor in her resolve we cannot say, but we are firmly convinced that, if it were, she was ignorant of the fact.

 

It is, however, one thing to resolve—quite another thing to carry resolution into effect. Branwen had, in an incidental way, obtained from her protector, Beniah, information as to the direction in which the hunter of the Hot Swamp lived, and the distance to his dwelling; but when she actually found herself in the forest, with nothing to guide her save the position of the sun—and, on cloudy days not even that—she began to realise somewhat of the difficulties that attended her enterprise, and when, on the first night, she crouched among the forked branches of an old oak, and heard the cries of wolves and other wild creatures, and even saw them prowling about by the light of the moon as it flickered through the foliage, she began to appreciate the dangers.

 

She had not, indeed, been so foolish as to set out on her expedition without a certain amount of forethought—what she deemed careful and wise consideration. She knew that by noting the position of the sun when at its highest point in the sky she could follow pretty closely the direction which Beniah had pointed out to her. She was quite aware that food was absolutely necessary to life, and had packed up a large bundle of dried meat, and also provided herself with one of her host’s bows and a sheaf of arrows. Besides this, she knew, like every girl of the period, how to snare rabbits, and was even expert in throwing stones, so that, if it should come to the worst, she could manage to subsist on little birds. As to sleeping at night, she had been accustomed, as a little girl, to climb trees, which faculty had not yet departed from her, and she knew well that among the branches of many kinds of trees there were cosy resting-places where neither man nor beast would be likely to discover her. She had also some idea of what it is to follow a trail, for she had often heard the king’s chief hunter refer to the process. As it was certain that Bladud, being an enormously big man, would leave a very obvious trail behind him, she would follow that—of course keeping well in the rear, so that he might never dream of her existence or intentions until the fatal time arrived when she should have to appear like a guardian angel and nurse him till he died.

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