He eagerly grasped the hand of
Madoc. "Alas," continued the hermit, "to know him would little answer
the purpose of thy bold and enterprising spirit. They adversary, as thou
mayest have conjectured, is in league with the powers of darkness.
Against them what can courage, what can adventure avail? They can
unthread thy joints, and crumble all thy sinews. They can chain up thy
limbs in marble. For how many perils, how many unforseen disasters ought
he to be prepared, who dares to encounter them?"
"The name of him who has ravished from thee the dearest treasure of thy
heart, is Roderic. His mother--attend, oh Edwin, for whatever the
incredulous may pretend, the tales related by the bards in their
immortal songs, of ghosts, and fairies, and dire enchantment, are not
vain and fabulous.--You have heard of the inauspicious fame and the bad
eminence of Rodogune. She withdrew from the fields of Clwyd within the
memory of the elder of shepherds. Various were the conjectures
occasioned by her disappearance. Some imagined, that for the haughtiness
of her humour, and the malignity of her disposition, characters that
were wholly unexampled in the pastoral life, she had been carried away
before the period limited by nature to the place of torment by the
goblins of the abyss.
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