In place of giving me the information I was panting for, the whole town came cackling round me with comments on the organist and the sacrilege. I turned into the 'Fishing Smack' inn, a likely place to get what news was to be had, and found the asthmatical old landlord haranguing some fishermen who were drinking their ale on a settle.

'It's my b'lief,' said the old man, 'that Tom was arter somethink else besides that air jewelled cross. I'm eighty-five year old come next Dullingham fair, and I regleck as well as if it wur yisterdy when resur-rectionin' o' carpuses wur carried on in the old churchyard jes' like one o'clock, and the carpuses sent up to Lunnon reg'lar, and it's my 'pinion as that wur part o' Tom's game, dang 'im; and if I'd a 'ad my way arter the crouner's quest, he'd never a' bin buried in the very churchyard as he went and blast-phemed.'

'Where would you 'a buried 'im, then, Muster Lantoff?' asked a fisher-boy in a blue worsted jerkin.

'Buried 'im? why, at the cross-ruds, with a hedge-stake through his guts, to be sure. If there's a penny agin' 'im on that air slate' (pointing to a slate hung up on the door) 'there must be ten shillins, dang 'im.'

'You blear-eyed, ignorant old donkey,' I cried, coming suddenly upon him, 'what do you suppose he could have done with a dead body in these days? Here's your wretched ten shillings,—for which you'd sell all the corpses in Raxton churchyard.'

And I gave him half-a-sovereign, feeling, somehow, that I was doing honour to Winifred.

'Thankee for the money, Mister Hal, anyhow,' said the old creature. 'You was allus a liberal 'un, you was. But as to what Tom could 'a dun with the carpus, I'm allus heer'd that you may dew anythink with any-think, if you on'y send it carriage-paid to Lunnon,'

I left the house in anger and disgust. No tidings could I get of Winifred in Raxton or Graylingham.

By this time I was thoroughly worn out, and obliged to go home. My anxiety had become nearly insupportable. All night I walked up and down my bedroom, like a caged animal, cursing Superstition, cursing Convention, and all the other follies that had combined to destroy her. It was not till the next day that the true state of the case was made known to me in the following manner: At the end of the town lived the widow of Shales, the tailor. Winifred and I had often, in our childish days, stood and watched old Shales, sitting cross-legged on a board in the window, at his work, when Winifred would whisper to me, 'How nice it must be to be a tailor!'

As I passed this shop I now saw that on the same board was sitting a person in whom Winifred had taken still stronger interest. This was a diminutive imitation of the deceased, in the person of his hump-backed son, a little man of about twenty-four, who might, as far as appearance went, have been any age from twenty to eighty, with a pale anxious face like his mother's. He was stitching at a coat with, apparently, the same pair of scissors by his side that used to delight us two children. Standing by the side of the board, and looking on with a skilled intelligence shining from her pale eyes, was Mrs. Shales, with an infant in her arms—a wasted little grandchild wrapt in a plaid shawl, apparently smoking a chibouque, but in reality sucking vigorously at the mouthpiece of a baby's bottle, which it was clasping deftly with its pink little fingers.

Mrs. Shales beckoned me mysteriously into her shop, and then into the little parlour behind it, where she used to sit and watch the customers through the green muslin blind of the glass door, like a spider in its web. Young Shales, who left his board, followed us, and they then gave me some news that at once decided my course of action. They told me that one morning, after her frightful shock, Winifred had encountered Shales, who was taking, a holiday, and employing it in catching young crabs among the stones. Winifred, who had a great liking for the hump-backed tailor, had come up to him and talked in a dazed way. Shales, pitying her condition, had induced her to go home with him; and then it had occurred to him to go and inquire at the Hall what suggestion could be made concerning her at a house where her father had been so well known. He could not see me; I was ill in bed. He saw my mother, who at once suggested that Winifred should be taken to Wales, to an aunt with whom, according to Wynne, she had been living. (No one but myself knew anything of Wynne's affairs, and my mother, though she had heard of the aunt, had not, as I then believed, heard of her death.) She proposed that Shales himself should contrive to take Winifred to Wales. 'She had reasons,' she said, 'for wishing that Winifred should not be handed over to the local parish officer.' She offered to pay Shales liberally for going. I, however, was to know nothing of this. Her object, of course, was to get Winifred out of my way. The aunt's address was furnished by a Mr. Lacon of Dullingham, an old friend of Wynne's, who also, it seems, was ignorant of the aunt's death. This aunt, a sister of Winifred's mother, named Davies, the widow of a sea captain who had once known better days, resided in an old cottage between Bettws y Coed and Capel Curig. Shales had found no difficulty in persuading Winifred to go with him, for she had now sunk into a condition of dazed stupor, and was very docile.

They started on their long journey across England by rail, and everything went well till they got into Wales, when Winifred's stupor seemed to be broken into by the familiar scenery; her wits became alive again. Then an idea seemed to seize her that she was pursued by me, as the messenger bearing my dead father's curse. The appearance of any young man bearing the remotest resemblance to me frightened her. At last, before they reached Bettws y Coed, she had escaped, and was lost among the woods. Shales had made every effort to find her, but without avail, and was compelled at last, by the demands of his business, to give up the quest. He had returned on the previous evening, and my mother had enjoined him not to tell me what had been done, though she seemed much distressed at hearing that Winnie was lost, and was about to send others into Wales in order to find her, if possible. Shales, however, had determined to tell me, as the matter, he said, lay upon his conscience.

On getting this news I went straight home, ordered a portmanteau to be packed, and placed in it all my ready cash. Before starting I sat down to write a letter to my uncle. On hearing of my movements, my mother came to me in great agitation. In her eyes there was that haggard expression which I thought I understood. Already she had begun to feel that she and she alone was responsible for whatsoever calamities might fall upon the helpless deserted girl she had sent away. Already she had begun to feel the pangs of that remorse which afterwards stung her so cruelly that not all Winnie's woes, nor all mine, were so dire as hers. There are some natures that feel themselves responsible for all the unforeseen, as well as for all the foreseen, consequences of their acts. My mother was one of these. I rose as she entered, offered her a seat, and then sat down again.

She inquired whither I was going.

'To North Wales,' I said.

She stood aghast. But she now understood that grief had made me a man.

'You are going,' said she, 'after the daughter of the scoundrel who desecrated your father's tomb?'

'I am going after the young lady whom I intend to marry.'

'Wynne's daughter marry my only son! Never!'

I proceeded with my letter.

'I will write to your uncle Aylwin at once. I will tell him you are going to marry that miscreant's daughter, and he will disinherit you.'

'In that case, mother,' I said, rising from the table, 'I need not trouble myself to finish my letter; for I was writing to him, telling him the same thing. Still, perhaps I had better send mine too,' I continued. 'I should like at least to remain on friendly terms with him, he is so good to me'; and I resumed my seat at the writing-table.

'Henry,' said my mother, after a second or two, 'I think you had better not write to your uncle; it might only make matters worse. You had better leave it to me.'

'Thank you, mother, the letter is finished,' I replied as I sealed it up, 'and will be sent. Good-bye, dear,' I said, taking her hand and kissing it. 'You knew not what you did, and I know you did it for the best.'

'When do you return, Henry?' asked she, in a conquered and sad tone, that caused me many a pang to remember afterwards.

'That is altogether uncertain,' I answered. 'I go to follow Winifred. If I find her alive I shall marry her, if she will marry me, unless permanent insanity prove a barrier. If she is dead'—(I restrained myself from saying aloud what I said to myself)—'I shall still follow her.'

'The daughter of the scoundrel!' she murmured, her lips grey with suppressed passion.

'Mother,' I said, 'let us not part in anger. The sword of Fate is between us. When I was at school I made a certain vow. The vow was that I would woo and win but one woman upon earth—the daughter of the man who has since violated my father's tomb. I have lately made a second vow, that, until she is found, I shall devote my life to the quest of Winifred Wynne. If you think that I am likely to be deterred by fears of being disinherited by your family, open and read my letter to my uncle. I have there told him whom I intend to marry.'

'Mad, mad boy!' said my mother. 'Society will—'

'You have once or twice before mentioned society, mother. If I find Winifred Wynne, I shall assuredly marry her, unless prevented by the one obstacle I have mentioned. If I marry her I shall, if it so please me and her, take her into society.'

'Into society!' she replied, with ineffable scorn.

'And I shall say to society, "Here is my wife.'"

'And when society asks, "Who is your wife?'"

'I shall reply, "She is the daughter of the drunken organist who desecrated my father's tomb, though that concerns you not:—her own speciality, as you see, is that she is the flower of all girlhood."'

'And when society rejects this earthly paragon?'

'Then I shall reject society.'

'Reject society, boy!' said my mother. 'Why, Cyril Aylwin himself, the bohemian painter who has done his best to cheapen and vulgarise our name, is not a more reckless, lawless leveller than you. And, good heavens! to him, and perhaps afterwards to you, will come—the coronet.'

And she left the room.



III

WINIFRED'S DUKKERIPEN

I

I need not describe my journey to North Wales. On reaching Bettws y Coed I turned into the hotel there—'The Royal Oak'—famished; for, as fast as trains could carry me, I had travelled right across England, leaving rest and meals to chance. I found the hotel full of English painters, whom the fine summer had attracted thither as usual. The landlord got me a bed in the village. A six-o'clock table d'hote was going on when I arrived, and I joined it. Save myself, the guests were, I think, landscape painters to a man. They had been sketching in the neighbourhood. I thought I had never met so genial and good-natured a set of men, and I have since often wondered what they thought of me, who met such courteous and friendly advances as they made towards me in a temper that must have seemed to them morose or churlish and stupid. Before the dinner was over another tourist entered—a fresh-complexioned young Englishman in spectacles, who, sitting next to me, did at length, by force of sheer good-humour, contrive to get into a desultory kind of conversation with me, and, as far as I remember, he talked well. He was not an artist, I found, but an amateur geologist and antiquary. His hobby was not like that fatal antiquarianism of my father's, which had worked so much mischief, but the harmless quest of flint implements. His talk about his collection of flints, however, sent my mind off to Flinty Point and the never-to-be-forgotten flint-built walls of Raxton church. After dinner, coffee, liquors, and tobacco being introduced into the dining-room, I got up, intending to roam about outside the hotel till bedtime; but the rain, I found, was falling in torrents. I was compelled to return to my friend of the 'flints.' At that moment one of the artists plunged into a comic song, and by the ecstatic look of the company I knew that a purgatorial time was before me. I resigned myself to my fate. Song followed song, until at last even my friend of the flints struck up the ballad of Little Billee, whose lugubrious refrain seemed to 'set the table in a roar'; but to me it will always be associated with sickening heartache.

As soon as the rain ceased I left the hotel and went to the room in the little town the landlord had engaged for me. There, with the roar in my ears of the mountain streams (swollen by the rains), I went to bed and, strange to say, slept.

Next morning I rose early, breakfasted at 'The Royal Oak' as soon as I could get attended to, and proceeded in the direction in which, according to what I had gathered from various sources, Mrs. Davies had lived. This led me through a valley and by the side of a stream, whose cascades I succeeded, after many efforts, in crossing. After a while, however, I found that I had taken a wrong track, and was soon walking in the contrary direction. I will not describe that long dreary walk in a drenching rain, with nothing but the base of the mountain visible, all else being lost in clouds and mist.

After blundering through marshy and boggy hillocks for miles, I found myself at last in the locality indicated to me. Arriving at a roadside public-house, I entered it, and on inquiry was vexed to find that I had again been misdirected. I slept there, and in the morning started again on my quest. I was now a long way off my destination, but had at least the satisfaction of knowing that I was on the right road at last. In the afternoon I reached another wayside inn, very similar to that in which I had slept. I walked up at once to the landlord (a fat little Englishman who looked like a Welshman, with black eyes and a head of hair like a black door-mat), and asked him if he had known Mrs. Davies. He said he had, but seemed anxious to assure me that he was a Chester man and 'not a Taffy.' She had died, he told me, not long since. But he had known more of her niece, Winifred Wynne (or, as most people called her, Winifred Davies); for, said he, 'she was a queer kind of outdoor creature that everybody knew.—as fond of the rain and mist as sensible folk are fond of sunshine.'

'Where did she live?' I inquired.

'You must have passed the very door,' said the man. And then he indicated a pretty little cottage by the roadside which I had passed, not far from the lake. Mrs. Davies (he told me) had lived there with her niece till the aunt died.

'Then you knew Winifred Wynne?' I said. There was to me a romantic kind of interest about a man who had seen Winifred in Wales.

'Knew her well,' said he. 'She was a Carnarvon gal—tremenjus fond o' the sea—and a rare pretty gal she was.'

'Pretty gal she is, you might ha' said, Mr. Blyth,' a woman's voice exclaimed from the settle beneath the window. 'She's about in these parts at this very moment, though Jim Burton there says it's her ghose. But do ghoses eat and drink? that's what I want to know. Besides, if anybody's like to know the difference between Winnie Wynne and Winnie Wynne's ghose, I should say it's most likely me.'

I turned round. A Gypsy girl, dressed in fine Gypsy costume, very dark but very handsome, was sitting on a settle drinking from a pot of ale, and nursing an instrument of the violin kind, which she was fondling as though it were a baby. She was quite young, not above eighteen years of age, slender, graceful—remarkably so, even for a Gypsy girl. Her hair, which was not so much coal-black as blue-black, was plaited in the old-fashioned Gypsy way, in little plaits that looked almost as close as plaited straw, and as it was of an unusually soft and fine texture for a Gypsy, the plaits gave it a lustre quite unlike that which unguents can give. As she sat there, one leg thrown over the over, displaying a foot which, even in the heavy nailed boots, would have put to shame the finest foot of the finest English lady I have ever seen, I could discern that she was powerful and tall; her bosom, gently rising and falling beneath the layers of scarlet and yellow and blue handkerchiefs, which filled up the space the loose-fitting gown of bright merino left open, was of a breadth fully worthy of her height. A silk handkerchief of deep blood-red colour was bound round her head, not in the modern Gypsy fashion, but more like an Oriental turban. From each ear was suspended a massive ring of red gold. Round her beautiful, towering, tanned neck was a thrice-twisted necklace of half-sovereigns and amber and red coral. She looked me full in the face. Then came a something in the girl's eyes the like of which I had seen in no other Gypsy's eyes, though I had known well the Gypsies who used to camp near Rington Manor, not far from Raxton, for my kinsman Percy Aylwin, the poet, had lately fallen in love with Winnie's early friend, Rhona Boswell. It was not exactly an 'uncanny' expression, yet it suggested a world quite other than this. It was an expression such as one might expect to see in a 'budding spae-wife,' or in a Roman Sibyl. And whose expression was it that it now reminded me of? But the remarkable thing was that this expression was intermittent; it came and went like the shadows the fleeting clouds cast along the sunlit grass. Then it was followed by a look of steady self-reliance and daring. This last variation of expression was what now suddenly came into her eyes as she said, scrutinising me from head to foot:

'Reia, you make a good git-up for a Romany-chal. Can you rokkra Romanes? No, I see you can't. I should ha' took you for the right sort. I should ha' begun the Romany rokkerpen with you, only you ain't got the Romany glime in your eyes. It's a pity he ain't got the Romany glime, ain't it, Jim?'

She turned to a young Gypsy fellow who was sitting at the other end of the settle, drinking also from a pot of ale, and smoking a cutty pipe.

'Don't ax me about no mumply Gorgio's eyes,' muttered the man, striking the leather legging of his right leg with a silver-headed whip he carried. 'You're allus a-takin' intrust in the Gorgios, and yet you're allus a-makin' believe as you hate 'em.'

'You say Winifred Wynne is back again?' I cried in an eager voice.

'That's jist what I did say, and I ain't deaf, my rei. How she managed to get back here puzzles me, poor thing, for she's jist for all the world like Rhona's daddy's daddy, Opi Bozzell, what buried his wits in his dead wife's coffin. She's even skeared at me.'

'Why, you don't mean to say Winnie's back!' cried the landlord. 'To think that I shouldn't have heard about Winnie Wynne bein' back. When did you see her, Sinfi?'

'I see her fust ever so many nights ago. I was comin' down this road, when what do I see but a gal a-kicking at the door of Mrs. Davies's emp'y house, and a-sobbin' she was jist fit to break her heart, and I sez to myself, as I looked at her—"Now, if it was possible for that 'ere gal to be Winifred Wynne, she'd be Winifred Wynne, but as it ain't possible for her to be Winifred Wynne, it ain't Winifred Wynne, and any mumply Gorgie [Footnote] as ain't Winifred Wynne may kick and sob for a blue moon for all me."'

[Footnote: Gorgio, a man who is not a Gypsy. Gorgie, a woman who is not a Gypsy.]

'But it was Winnie Wynne, I s'pose?' said the landlord, in a state now of great curiosity.

'It was Winnie Wynne,' replied the Gypsy, handing her companion her empty beer-pot, and pointing to the landlord as a sign that the man was to pass it on to him to be refilled. 'Up I goes to her, and I says, "Why, sister, who's bin a-meddlin' with you? I'll tear the windpipe out o' anybody wot's been a-meddlin' with you."'

When the girl used the word 'sister' a light broke in upon me.

'Are you Sinfi Lovell?' I cried.

'That jist my name, my rei; but as I said afore, I ain't deaf. Jist let Jim pass my beer across and don't interrup' me, please.'

'Don't rile her, sir,' whispered the landlord to me; 'she's got the real witch's eye, and can do you a mischief in a twink, if she likes. She's a good sort, though, for all that.'

'What are you two a-whisperin' about me?' said the girl in a menacing tone that seemed to alarm the landlord.

'I was only tellin' the gentleman not to rile you, because you was a fightin' woman,' said the man.

The Gypsy looked appeased and even gratified at the landlord's explanation.

'But what did Winnie Wynne do then, Sinfi?' asked the landlord.

'She turns round sharp,' said the Gypsy; 'she looks at me as skeared as the eyes of a hotchiwitchi [Footnote] as knows he's a-bein' uncurled for the knife. "Father!" she cries, and away she bolts like a greyhound; and I know'd at oust as she wur under a cuss. Now, you see, Mr. Blyth, that upset me, that did, for Winnie Wynne was the only one on 'em, Gorgio or Gorgie, ever I liked. No offence, Mr. Blyth, it isn't your fault you was born one; but,' continued the girl, holding up the foaming tankard and admiring the froth as it dropped from the rim upon her slender brown hand on its way to the floor, 'Winnie Wynne was the only one on 'em, Gorgio or Gorgie, ever I liked, and that upset me, that did, to see that 'ere beautiful cretur a-grinnin' and jabberin' under a cuss. The Romanies is gittin' too fond by half o' the Gorgios, and will soon be jist like mumply Gorgios themselves, speckable and silly; but Gorgio or Gorgie, she was the only one on 'em ever I liked, was Winnie Wynne; and when she turned round on me like that, with them kind eyes o' hern (such kind eyes I never seed afore) lookin' like that at me (and I know'd she was under a cuss)—I tell you,' she said, still addressing the beer, 'that it's made me fret ever since—that's what it's done!'

[Footnote: Hedgehog.]

About the truth of this last statement there could be no doubt, for her face was twitching violently in her efforts to keep down her emotion.

'And did you follow her?' said the landlord.

'Not I; what was the good?'

'But what did you do, Sinfi?'

'What did I do? Well, don't you mind me comin' here one night and buyin' a couple of blankets off you, and some bread and meat and things?'

'In course I do, Sinfi, and you said you wanted them for the vans.'

The Gypsy smiled and said, 'I knowed she was bound to come back, so I pulls up the window and in I gets, and then opens the door and off I comes to you, as bein' the nearest neighbour, for the blankets and things, and I puts 'em in the house, and I leaves the door uncatched, and I hides myself behind the house, and, sure enough, back she comes, poor thing! I hears her kick, kick, kickin' at the door, and then I hears her go in when she finds it give way. So I waits a good while, till I thinks she's eat some o' the vittles and gone to sleep maybe, and then round the house I creeps, and in the door I peeps, and soon I hears her breathin' soft, and then I shuts the door and goes away to the place.' [Footnote]

[Footnote: Camping-place.]

'But why didn't you tell us all this, Sinfi?' asked the landlord. 'My wife would ha' went and seen arter her, and we wouldn't ha' touched a farthin' for they blankets and things, not we, Sinfi, not we.'

'Ah, you would, though,' said the girl, ''cause I'd ha' made you take it. Winnie Wynne was the only one on 'em, Gorgio or Gorgie, ever I liked, and nobody's got no right to see arter her only me, and that's why I'm about here now, if you must know; but nobody's got no right to see arter her only me, and nobody sha'n't nuther. They might go and skear her to run up the hills, and she might dash herself all to flactions in no time.'

'Don't take on so, Sinfi,' said the landlord. 'When they are in that way they allus turns agin them as they was fond on.'

'Then you noticed as she was fond o' me, Mr. Blyth,' said the girl with great earnestness.

'Of course she was fond on you, Sinfi; everybody knows that.'

'Yes,' said the girl, now much affected, 'every body knowed it, every body knowed as she was fond o' me. And to see her look at me like that—it was a cruel sight, Mr. Blyth, I can tell you. Such a look you never see'd in all your life, Mr. Blyth.'

'Then I take it she's in the house now?' said the landlord.

'She goes prowlin' about all day among the hills, as if she was a-lookin' for somebody; and she talks to somebody as she calls the Tywysog o'r Niwl, an' I know that's Welsh for the "Prince o' the Mist"; but back she comes at night. She talks to herself a good deal; and she sings to herself the Welsh gillies what Mrs. Davies larnt her in a v'ice as seems as if she wur a-singin' in her sleep, but it's very sweet to hear it. Yesterday I crep' near her when she was a-sittin' down lookin' at herself in that 'ere llyn where the water's so clear, "Knockers' Llyn," as they calls it, where her and me and Rhona Boswell used to go. And I heard her say she was "cussed by Henry's feyther." And then I heard her talk to somebody agin, as she called the Prince of the Mist; but it's herself as she's a-talkin' to all the while.'

'Cursed by Henry's father! What curse could any superstitious mystic call down upon the head of Winifred? The heaven that would answer a call of that kind would be a heaven for zanies and tomfools!' I shouted, in a paroxysm of rage against the entire besotted human race. 'That for the curse!' I cried, snapping my fingers. 'I am Henry, and I am come to share the curse, if there is one.'

'Young man,' interposed the landlord, 'such blas-pheemous langige as that must not be spoke here; I ain't a-goin' to have my good beer turned to vinegar by blasphemin' them as owns the thunder, I can tell you.'

But the effect of my words upon the Gypsy was that of a spark in a powder-mine.

'Henry?' she said, 'Henry? are you the fine rei as she used to talk about? Are you the fine cripple as she was so fond on? Yes, Beng te tassa mandi if you ain't Henry his very self.'

'Don't,' remonstrated the landlord, 'don't meddle with the gentleman, Sinfi. He ain't a cripple, as you can see.'

'Well, cripple or no cripple, he's Henry. I half thought it as soon as he began askin' about her. Now, my fine Gorgio, what do you and your fine feyther mean by cussin' Winnie Wynne? You've jist about broke her heart among ye. If you want to cuss you'd better cuss me;' and she sprang up in an attitude that showed me at once that she was a skilled boxer.

The male Gypsy rose and buttoned his coat over his waistcoat. I thought he was going to attack me. Instead of this, he said to the landlord:

'She's in for a set-to agin. She's sure to quarrel with me if I interferes, so I'll just go on to the place and not spile sport. Don't let her kill the chap, though, Mr. Blyth, if you can anyways help it. Anyhows, I ain't a-goin' to be called in for witness.'

With that he left the house.

The Gypsy girl looked at me from head to foot, and exclaimed,

'Lucky for you, my fine fellow, that I'm a duke's chavi, an' mustn't fight, else I'd pretty soon ask you outside and settle this off in no time. But you'd better keep clear of Mrs. Davies's cottage, I can tell you. Every stick in that house is mine.'

And, forgetting in her rage to pay her score, she picked up her strange-looking musical instrument, put it into a bag, and stalked out.

'She's got a queer temper of her own,' said the landlord; 'but she ain't a bad sort for all that. She's clever, too: she's the only woman in Wales, they say, as can play on the crwth now since Mrs. Davies is dead, what larnt her to do it.'

'The crwth?'

'The old ancient Welsh fiddle what can draw the Sperrits o' Snowdon when it's played by a vargin. I dessay you've often heard the sayin' "The sperrits follow the crwth." She makes a sight o' money by playin' on that fiddle in the houses o' the gentlefolk, and she's as proud as the very deuce. Ain't a bad sort, though, for all that.'

II

That I determined to cultivate the acquaintance of Sinfi Lovell I need scarcely say. But my first purpose was to see the cottage. The landlord showed me the way to it. He warned me that a storm was coming on, but I did not let that stay me. Masses of dark clouds were gathering, and there was every sign of a heavy rainstorm as I went out along the road in the direction indicated.

There was a damp boisterous wind, that seemed blowing from all points of the compass at once, and in a minute I was caught in a swirl of blinding rain. I took no heed of it, however, but hurried along the lonely road till I reached the cottage, which I knew at once was the one I sought. It was picturesque, but had a deserted look.

It was not till I stood in front or the door that I began to consider what I really intended to do in case I found her there. A heedless, impetuous desire to see her—to get possession of her—had brought me to Wales. But what was to be my course of action if I found her I had never given myself time to think.

If I could only clasp her in my arms and tell her I was Henry, I felt that she must, even in madness, know me and cling to me. I could not realise that any insanity could estrange her from me if I could only get near her.

I put my thumb upon the old-fashioned latch, and found that the door was not locked. It yielded to my touch, and with a throbbing of every pulse, I pushed it open and looked in.

In front of me rose a staircase, steep and narrow. There was sufficient evening light to enable me to see up the staircase, and to distinguish two black bedroom doors, now closed, on the landing. I stood on the wet threshold till my nerves grew calmer. On my right and on my left the doors of the two rooms on the ground floor were open. I could see that the one on my left was stripped of furniture.

I entered the room on my right—a low room of some considerable length, with heavy beams across the ceiling, which in that light seemed black. Two or three chairs and a table were in it. There was a brisk fire, and over it a tea-kettle of the kind much favoured by Gypsies, as I afterwards learnt. There was no grate, but an open hearth, exactly like the one in Wynne's cottage, where Winifred and I used to stand in summer evenings to see the sky, and the stars twinkling above the great sooty throat of the open chimney. I now perceived the crwth and bow upon the table. Sinfi Lovell had evidently been here since we parted. On the walls hung a few of those highly coloured prints of Scriptural subjects which, at one time, used to be seen in English farm-houses, and are still the only works of art with the Welsh peasants and a few well-to-do Welsh Gypsies who would emulate Gorgio tastes.

On the left-hand side of the room was an arched recess, in which, no doubt, had stood at one time a sideboard, or some such piece of furniture. There was no occupant of the room, however, and I grew calmer as I stood before the fire, which drew from my wet clothes a cloud of steam. The ruddy fingers of the fire-gleam playing upon the walls made the colours of the pictures seem bright as the tints of stained glass. The pathetic message of those flickering rays flowed into my soul. The red mantle of the Prodigal Son, in which he was feeding the swine, shone as though it had been soaked in sorrow and blood-red sin. The house was apparently empty; the tension of my passion became for the first time relaxed, and I passed into a strange mood of pathos, dreamy, but yet acute, in which Winifred's fate, and my mother's harshness, and my father's scarred breast, seemed all a mingled mystery of reminiscent pain.

I had not stood more than a minute, however, when I was startled into a very different mood. I thought I heard a sobbing noise, which seemed to me to come from some one overhead, some one lying upon the boards of the room above me. I was rooted to the spot where I stood, for the sob seemed scarcely human, and yet it seemed to be hers. A new feeling about Winifred's madness came upon me. I recalled Mivart's horrible description of the mimicry. My God! what was I about to see? I dared not turn and go upstairs: the fire and the singing tea-kettle were, at least, companions. But something impelled me to take the bow and draw it across the crwth-strings. Presently I thought I heard a door overhead softly open, and this was followed by the almost inaudible creak of a light footstep descending the stairs. With paralysed pulses I kept my eyes fixed on the half-open door, in the certainty of seeing her pass along the little passage leading from the staircase to the front door. But as I heard the dear footsteps descend stair after stair my horror left me, and I nearly began to sob myself. My thoughts now were all for her safety. I slipped into the recess, fearing to take her by surprise.

Soon the slim girlish figure passed into the room. And as I saw her glide along I was stunned, as though I had not expected to see her, as though I had not known the footstep coming down the stairs.

With her eyes fixed on the fireplace, she brushed past me without perceiving me, took a chair, and sat down in front of the fire, her elbows resting on her knees, and her face meditatively sunk between her hands. Her sobbing bad ceased, and unless my ears deceived me, had given place to an occasional soft happy gurgle of childish laughter.

I stepped out from the shelter of my archway into the middle of the room, dubious as to what course to pursue. I thought that, on the whole, the movement that would startle her least would be to slip quietly out of the room and out of the house while she was in the reverie, then knock at the door. She would arouse herself then, expecting to see some one, and would not be so entirely taken by surprise at the sight of my face as she would have been at finding me, without the slightest warning, standing behind her in the room. I did this: I slipped out at the door and knocked, gently at first, but got no answer; then a little louder—no answer; then louder and louder, till at last I thundered at the door in a state of growing alarm; still no answer.

'She is stone deaf,' I thought; and now I remembered having noticed, as she brushed past me, a far-off gaze in her eyes, such as some stone-deaf people show.

I re-entered the house. There she was, sitting immovably before the fire, in the same reverie. I coughed and hemmed, softly at first, then more loudly, finally with such vigour that I ran the risk of damaging my throat, and still there was no movement of that head bent over the fire and resting in the palms of the hands. At last I made a step forward, then another, finally finding myself on the knitted cloth hearthrug beside her. I now had the full view of her profile. That she should be still unconscious of my presence was unaccountable, for I stood at the end of the rug gazing at her. Again I coughed and hemmed, but without producing the smallest effect. Then I determined to address her; but I thought it would be safer to do so as a stranger than to announce myself at once as Henry.

'I beg pardon,' I said, 'but is there any one at home?'

No answer.

'Is this the way to Capel Curig?

No answer.

'Will you give me shelter?' I said; and finally I gave a desperate 'halloo.'

My efforts had not produced the slightest effect. I was now in a state of great agitation. That she was stone deaf seemed evident. But was she not in some kind of fit, though without the contortions of face Mivart had described to me—contortions which haunted me as much as though I had seen them? I stooped down and gazed into her face. There was now no terror there, nor even sorrow. I could see in her eyes sparks of pleasure, as in the eyes of an infant when it seems to see in the air pictures or colours to which our eyes are blind. Round about her cheek and mouth a little dimple was playing, exactly like the dimple that plays around the mouth of a pleased child. This marvellous expression on her face recalled to me what Mivart had said as to the form her dementia assumed between one paroxysm and another.

'Thank God,' thought I, 'she's not in a fit: she's only deaf.'

Driven to desperation, however, I seized her shoulder and shook it. This aroused her. She started up with violence, at the same time overturning the chair upon which she had been sitting. She stared at me wildly. The danger of what I had done struck me now. A fortunate inspiration caused me to say, 'Tywysog o'r Niwl.' Then there broke over her face a sweet smile of childish pleasure. She made a graceful curtsey, and said, 'You've come at last; I was thinking about you all the while.'

Shall I ever forget her expression? Her eyes were alive with light and pleasure. It was as though Winifred's soul had fled or the soul of her childhood had re-entered and taken possession of her body. But the witchery of her expression no words can describe. Never had I seen her so lovely as now. Often when a child I had seen the boatmen on the sands look at us as we passed—seen them stay in the midst of their toil, their dull faces brightening with admiration, as though a bar of unexpected sunlight had fallen across them. In the fields I had seen labourers, sitting at their simple dinner under the hedges, stay their meal to look after the child—so winning, dazzling, and strange was her beauty. And when I had first met her again, a child no longer, in the churchyard, my memory had accepted her at once as fulfilling, and more than fulfilling, all her childhood's promise. But never had she looked so bewitching as now—a poor mad girl who had lost her wits from terror.

For some time I could only keep murmuring: 'More lovely mad than sane!'

'As if I didn't know the Prince!' said she. 'You who, in fine weather or cloudy, wet or dry, are there on the hills to meet me! As if I don't know the Prince of the Mist when I see him! But how kind of you to come down here and see poor Winnie, poor lonely Winnie, at home!'

She fetched a chair, placed it in front of the fire, pointed to it with the same ravishingly childlike smile, indicating that it was for me, and then, when she saw me mechanically sit down, picked up her chair and came and sat close beside me.

In a second she was lost in a reverie as profound as that from which I had aroused her; and the only sound I heard was the rain on the window and the fitful gusts of wind playing around the cottage.

The wind having blown open the door, I got up to shut it. Winifred rose too, and again taking hold of my hand, she looked up into my face with a smile, and said, 'Don't go; I'm so lonely—poor Winnie's so lonely.'

As I held her hand in mine, and closed my other hand over it, I murmured to myself, 'If God will only give her to me like this—mad like this—I will be content.'

'Dearest,' I said, longing to put my arm round her waist—to kiss her own passionless lips—but I dared not, lest I might frighten her away, 'I will not leave you. I will never leave you. You shall never be lonely any more.'

I closed the door, and we resumed our seats.

Can I put into words what passed within my soul as we two sat by the fire, she holding my hand in her own—holding it as innocently as a child holds the hand of its mother? Can I put into words my mingled feelings of love and pity and wild grief, as I sat looking at her and murmuring, 'Yes; if God will only give her to me like this, I will be content'?

'Prince,' said she, 'your eyes look very kind!—Sweet, sweet eyes,' she continued, looking at me. 'The Prince of the Mist has love-eyes,' she repeated, as she placed the seats before the fire again.

Then I heard her murmur, 'Love-eyes! love-eyes! Henry's love-eyes!' Then a terrible change came over her. She sprang up and came and peered in my face. An indescribable expression of terror overspread her features, her nostrils expanded, her lips were drawn tightly over her teeth, her eyes seemed starting from their sockets; her throat suddenly became fluted like the throat of an aged woman, then veined with knotted, cruel cords. Then she stood as transfixed, and her face was mimicking that appalling look on her father's face which I had seen in the moonlight. With a yell of 'Father!' she leapt from me. Then she rushed from the house, and I could hear her run by the window, crying, 'Cursed, cursed, cursed by Henry's father!'

For an instant the movement took away my breath; but I soon recovered and sprang after her to the door.

There, in the distance, I saw her in the rain, running along the road. My first impulse was to follow her and run her down. But luckily I considered the effect this might have in increasing her terror, and stopped. She was soon out of sight. I wandered about the road calling her name, and calling on Heaven to have a little pity—a little mercy.

III

I decided to return to the house, but found that I had lost my way in the obscurity and pelting rain. For hours I wandered about, without the slightest clue as to where I was. I was literally soaked to the skin. Several times I fell into holes in a morass, and was up to my hips in moss and mud and water. Then I began to call out for assistance till I was hoarse. I might as well have called out on an uninhabited island.

The night wore on, and the darkness grew so intense that I could scarcely see my hand when I held it up. Every star in the heavens was hid away as by a thick-pall. The darkness was positively benumbing to the faculties, and added, if possible, to the misery I was in on account of Winifred. Suddenly my progress was arrested. I had fallen violently against something. A human body, a woman! I thrust out my hand and seized a woman's damp arm.

'Winifred,' I cried, 'it's Henry.'

'I thought as much.' said the voice of the Gypsy girl I had met at the wayside inn, and she seized me by the throat with a fearful grip. 'You've been to the cottage and skeared her away, and now she's seed you there she'll never come back; she'll wander about the hills till she drops down dead, or falls over the brinks.'

'O God!' I cried, as I struggled away from her. 'Winifred! Winifred!

There was silence between us then.

'You seem mighty fond on her, young man,' said the Gypsy at length, in a softened voice, 'and you don't strike out at me for grabbin' your throat.'

'Winifred! Winifred!' I said, as I thought of her on the hills on a night like this.

'You seem mighty fond on her, young man,' repeated the girl's voice in the darkness.

But I could afford no words for her, so cruelly was misery lacerating me.

'Reia,' said the Gypsy, 'did I hurt your throat just now? I hope I didn't; but you see she was the only one of 'em ever I liked, Gorgio or Gorgie, 'cept Mrs. Davies, lad or wench. I know'd her as a child, and arterwards, when a fine English lady, as poor as a church-mouse, tried to spile her, a-makin' her a fine lady too, I thought she'd forget all about me. But not she. I never once called at Mrs. Davies's house with my crwth, as she taught me to play on, but out Winnie would come with her bright eyes an' say, "Oh, I'm so glad!" She meant she was glad to see me, bless the kind heart on her. An' when I used to see her on the hills, she'd come runnin' up to me, and she'd put her little hand in mine, she would, an' chatter away, she would, as we went up an' up. An' one day, when she heard me callin' one o' the Romany chies sister, she says, "Is that your sister?" an' when I says, "No; but the Romany chies call each other sister," then says she, pretending not to know all about our Romany ways, "Sinfi, I'm very fond on you, may I call you sister?" An' she had sich ways; an' she's the only Gorgio or Gorgie, 'cept Mrs. Davies, as I ever liked, lad or wench.'

The Gypsy's simple words came like a new message of comfort and hope, but I could not speak.

'Young man,' she continued, 'are you there?' and she put out her hand to feel for me.

I took hold of the hand. No words passed; none were needed. Never had I known friendship before. After a short time I said,

'What shall we do, Sinfi?'

'I shall wait a bit, till the stars are out,' said she. 'I know they're a-comin' out by the feel o' the wind. Then I shall walk up a path as Winnie knows. The sun'll be up ready for me by the time I get to the part I wants to go to. You know, young man, I must find her. She'll never come back to the cottage no more, now she's been skeared away from it.'

'But I must accompany you,' I said.

'No, no, you mustn't do that,' said the Gypsy; 'she might take fright and fall and be killed. Besides,' said she, 'Winifred Wynne's under a cuss; it's bad luck to follow up anybody under a cuss.'

'But you are following her,' I said.

'Ah, but that's different. "Gorgio cuss never touched Romany," as my mammy, as had the seein' eye, used to say.'

'But,' I exclaimed vehemently, 'I want to be cursed with her. I have followed her to be cursed with her. I mean to go with you.'

'Young man,' said she, 'are there many o' your sort among the Gorgios?'

'I don't know and I don't care,' said I.

''Cause,' said she, 'that sayin' o' yourn is a fine sight liker a Romany chi's nor a Romany chal's. It's the chies as sticks to the dials, cuss or no cuss. I wish the chals 'ud stick as close to the chies.'

After much persuasion, however, I induced the Gypsy to let me accompany her, promising to abide implicitly by her instructions.

Even while we were talking the rain had ceased, and patches of stars were shining brilliantly. These patches got rapidly larger. Sinfi Lovell proposed that we should go to the cottage, dry our clothes, and furnish ourselves with a day's provisions, which she said a certain cupboard in the cottage would supply, and also with her crwth, which she appeared to consider essential to the success of the enterprise.

'She's fond o' the crwth,' she said. 'She allus wanted Mrs. Davies to larn her to play it, but her aunt never would, 'cause when it's played by a maid on the hills to the Welsh dukkerin' gillie, [Footnote 1] the spirits o' Snowdon and the livin' mullos [Footnote 2] o' them as she's fond on will sometimes come and show themselves, and she said Winnie wasn't at all the sort o' gal to feel comfable with spirits moving round her. She larnt me it, though. It's only when the crwth is played by a maid on the hills that the spirits can follow it.'

[Footnote 1: Dukkerin gillie, incantation song.]

[Footnote 2: Livin' mullos, wraiths.]

We did as Shift suggested, and afterwards began our search. She proposed that we should go at once to Knockers' Llyn, where she had seen Winifred the day before sitting and talking to herself. We proceeded towards the spot.

IV

The Gypsy girl was as lithe and active as Winifred herself, and vastly more powerful. I was wasted by illness and fatigue. Along the rough path we went, while the morning gradually broke over the east. Great isles and continents of clouds were rolled and swirled from peak to peak, from crag to crag, across steaming valley and valley; iron-grey at first, then faintly tinged with rose, which grew warmer and richer and deeper every moment.

'It's a-goin' to be one of the finest sunrises ever seed,' said the Gypsy girl. 'Dordi! the Gorgios come to see our sunrises,' she continued, with the pride of an owner of Snowdon. 'You know this is the only way to see the hills. You may ride up the Llanberis side in a go-cart.'

Racked with anxiety as I was. I found it a relief during the ascent to listen to the Gypsy's talk about Winifred. She gave me a string of reminiscences about her that enchained, enchanted, and yet harrowed me. A strong friendship had already sprung up between me and my companion; and I was led to tell her about the cross and the curse, the violation of my father's tomb and its disastrous consequences. She was evidently much awed by the story.

'Well,' said she, when I had stopped to look round, 'it's my belief as the cuss is a-workin' now, and'll have to spend itself. If it could ha' spent itself on the feyther as did the mischief, why all well an' good, but, you see, he's gone, an' left it to spend itself on his chavi; jist the way with 'em Gorgio feythers an' Romany daddies. It'll have to spend itself, though, that cuss will, I'm afeard.'

'But,' I said, 'you don't mean that you think for her father's crime she'll have to beg her bread in desolate places.'

'I do though, wusser luck,' said the Gypsy solemnly, stopping suddenly, and standing still as a statue.

'And this,' I ejaculated, 'is the hideous belief of all races in all times! Monstrous if a lie—more monstrous if true! Anyhow I'll find her. I'll traverse the earth till I find her. I'll share her lot with her, whatever it may be, and wherever it may be in the world. If she's a beggar, I'll beg by her side.'

'Right you are, brother,' said the Gypsy, breaking in enthusiastically. 'I likes to hear a man say that. You're liker a Romany chi nor a Romany chal, the more I see of you. What I says to our people is:—"If the Romany chals would only stick by the Romany chies as the Romany chies sticks by the Romany chals, where 'ud the Gorgios be then? Why, the Romanies would be the strongest people on the arth." But you see, reia, about this cuss—a cuss has to work itself out, jist for all the world like the bite of a sap.' [Footnote]

[Footnote: Sap, a snake.]

Then she continued, with great earnestness, looking across the kindling expanse of hill and valley before us: 'You know, the very dead things round us,—these here peaks, an' rocks, an' lakes, an' mountains—ay, an' the woods an' the sun an' the sky above our heads,—cusses us when we do anythink wrong. You may see it by the way they looks at you. Of course I mean when you do anythink wrong accordin' to us Romanies. I don't mean wrong accordin' to the Gorgios: they're two very different kinds o' wrongs.'

'I don't see the difference,' said I; 'but tell me more about Winifred.'

'You don't see the difference?' said Sinfi. 'Well then, I do. It's wrong to tell a lie to a Romany, ain't it? But is it wrong to tell a lie to a Gorgio? Not a bit of it. And why? 'Cause most Gorgios is fools and wants lies, an' that gives the poor Romanies a chance. But this here cuss is a very bad kind 'o cuss. It's a dead man's cuss, and what's wuss, him as is cussed is dead and out of the way, and so it has to be worked out in the blood of his child. But when she's done that, when she's worked it out of her blood, things'll come right agin if the cross is put back agin on your father's buzzum.'

'When she has done what?' I said.

'Begged her bread in desolate places,' said the Gypsy girl solemnly. 'Then if the cross is put back agin on your feyther's buzzum, I believe things'll all come right. It's bad the cusser was your feyther though.'

'But why?' I asked.

'There's nobody can't hurt you and them you're fond on as your own breed can. As my poor mammy used to say, "For good or for ill you must dig deep to bury your daddy." But you know, brother, the wust o' this job is that it's a trushul as has been stole.'

'A trushul?'

'What you call a cross. There's nothin' in the world so strong for cussin' and blessin' as a trushul, unless the stars shinin' in the river or the hand in the clouds is as strong. Why, I tell you there's nothin' a trushul can't do, whether it's curin' a man as is bit by a sap, or wipin' the very rainbow out o' the sky by jist layin' two sticks crossways, or even curin' the cramp in your legs by jist settin' your shoes crossways; there's nothin' for good or bad a trushul can't do if it likes. Hav'n't you never heer'd o' the dukkeripen o' the trushul shinin' in the sunset sky when the light o' the sinkin' sun shoots up behind a bar o' clouds an' makes a kind o fiery cross? But to go and steal a trushul out of a dead man's tomb—why, it's no wonder as the Wynnes is cussed, feyther and child.'

I could not have tolerated this prattle about Gypsy superstitions had I not observed that through it all the Gypsy was on the qui vive, looking for the traces of her path that Winifred had unconsciously left behind her. Had the Gypsy been following the trail with the silence of an American Indian, she could not have worked more carefully than she was now working while her tongue went rattling on. I afterwards found this to be a characteristic of her race, as I afterwards found that what is called the long sight of the Gypsies (as displayed in the following of the patrin [Footnote: Trail]) is not long sight at all, but is the result of a peculiar faculty the Gypsies have of observing more closely than Gorgios do everything that meets their eyes in the woods and on the hills and along the roads. When we reached the spot indicated by the Gypsy as being Winifred's haunt, the ledge where she was in the habit of coming for her imaginary interviews with the 'Prince of the Mist,' we did not stay there, but for a time still followed the path, which from this point became rougher and rougher, alongside deep precipices and chasms. Every now and then she would stop on a ledge of rock, and, without staying her prattle for a moment, stoop down and examine the earth with eyes that would not have missed the footprint of a rat. When I saw her pause, as she sometimes would in the midst of her scrutiny, to gaze inquiringly down some gulf, which then seemed awful to my inexperienced eyes, but which later on in the day, when I came to see the tremendous chasms of that side of Snowdon, seemed insignificant enough, the circulation of my blood would seem to stop, and then rush again through my body more violently than before. And while the 'patrin-chase' went on, and the morning grew brighter and brighter, the Gypsy's lithe, catlike tread never faltered. The rise and fall of her bosom were as regular and as calm as in the public-house. Such agility and such staying power in a woman astonished me. Finding no trace of Winnie, we returned to the little plateau by Knockers' Llyn.

'This is the place,' said the Gypsy; 'it used to be called in old times the haunted llyn, because when you sings the Welsh dukkerin gillie here or plays it on a crwth, the Knockers answers it. I dare say you've heard o' what the Gorgios call the triple echo o' Llyn Ddu'r Arddu. Well, it's somethin' like that, only bein' done by the knocking sperrits, it's grander and don't come 'cept when they hears the Welsh dukkerin gillie. Now, you must hide yourself somewheres while I go and touch the crwth in her favourite place. I think she'll come to that. I wish though I hadn't brought ye,' she continued, looking at me meditatively; 'you're a little winded a-ready, and we ain't begun the rough climbing at all. Up to this 'ere pool Winnie and me and Rhona Boswell used to climb when we was children; it needed longer legs nor ourn to get farther up, and you're winded a-ready. If she should come on you suddent, she's liker than not to run for a mile or more up that path where we've just been and then to jump down one of them chasms you've just seed. But if she does pop on ye, don't you try to grab her, whatever you do; leave me alone for that. You ain't got strength enough to grab a hare; you ought to be in bed. Besides, she won't be skeared at me. But,' she continued, turning round to look at the vast circuit of peaks stretching away as far as the eye could reach, 'we shall have to ketch her to-day somehow. She'll never go back to the cottage where you went and skeared her; and if she don't have a fall, she'll run about these here hills till she drops. We shall have to ketch her to-day somehow. I'm in hopes she'll come to the sound of my crwth, she's so uncommon fond on it; and if she don't come in the flesh, p'rhaps her livin' mullo will come, and that'll show she's alive.'

She placed me in a crevice overlooking the small lake, or pool, which on the opposite side was enclosed in a gorge, opening only by a cleft to the east. Then she unburdened herself of a wallet containing the breakfast, saying, 'When I come back we'll fall to and breakfiss.' She then, as though she were following the trail, made a circuit of the pool and disappeared through the gorge. All round the pool there was a narrow ragged ledge leading to this eastern opening. I stood concealed in my crevice and looked at the peaks, or rather at the vast masses of billowy vapours enveloping them, as they sometimes boiled and sometimes blazed, shaking—when the sun struck one and then another—from brilliant amethyst to vermilion, shot occasionally with purple, or gold, or blue.

A radiance now came pouring through the eastern opening down the gorge or cwm itself, and soon the light vapours floating about the pool were turned to sailing gauzes, all quivering with different dyes, as though a rainbow had become torn from the sky and woven into gossamer hangings and set adrift.

Fatigue was beginning to numb my senses and to conquer my brain. The acuteness of my mental anguish had consumed itself in its own intense fires. The idea of Winifred's danger became more remote. The mist-pageants of the morning seemed somehow to emanate from Winnie.

'No one is worthy to haunt such a scene as this,' I murmured, sinking against the rock, 'but Winifred—so beautiful of body and pure of soul. Would that I were indeed her "Prince of the Mist," and that we could die here together with Sinfi's strains in our ears.'

Then I felt coming over me strange influences which afterwards became familiar to me—influences which I can only call the spells of Snowdon. They were far more intense than those strange, sweet, wild, mesmeric throbs which I used to feel in Graylingham Wood, and which my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, seems also to have known, but they were akin to them. Then came the sound of Sinfi's crwth and song, and in the distance repetitions of it, as though the spirits of Snowdon were, in very truth, joining in a chorus.

At once a marvellous change came over me. I seemed to be listening to my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, and not to Sinfi Lovell. I was hearing that strain which in my childhood I had so often tried to imagine, and it was conjuring up the morning sylphs of the mountain air and all the 'flower-sprites' and 'sunshine elves' of Snowdon.

V

I shook off the spell when the music ceased; then I began to wonder why the Gypsy did not return. I was now faint and almost famished for want of food. I opened the Gypsy's wallet. There was the substantial and tempting breakfast she had brought from the cottage cupboard—cold beef and bread, and ale. I spread the breakfast on the ground.

Scarcely had I done so when a figure appeared at the opening of the gorge and caught the ruddy flood of light. It was Winifred, bare-headed. I knew it was she, and I waited in breathless suspense, crouching close up into the crevice, dreading lest she should see me and be frightened away. She stood in the eastern cleft of the gorge against the sun for fully half a minute, looking around as a stag might look that was trying to give the hunters the slip.

'She has seen the Gypsy,' I thought, 'and been scared by her.' Then she came down and glided along the side of the pool. At first she did not see me, though she stood opposite and stopped, while the opalescent vapours from the pool steamed around her, and she shone as through a glittering veil, her eyes flashing like sapphires. The palpitation of my heart choked me; I dared not stir, I dared not speak; the slightest movement or the slightest sound might cause her to start away. There was she whom I had travelled and toiled to find—there was she, so close to me, and yet must I let her pass and perhaps lose her after all—for ever?

Where was the Gypsy girl? I was in an agony of desire to see her or hear her crwth, and yet her approach might frighten Winifred to her destruction.

But Winifred, who had now seen me, did not bound away with that heart-quelling yell of hers which I had dreaded. No, I perceived to my astonishment that the flash of the eyes was not of alarm, but of greeting to me—pleasure at seeing me! She came close to the water, and then I saw a smile on her face through the misty film—a flash of shining teeth.

'May I come?' she said.

'Yes, Winifred,' I gasped, scarcely knowing what I said in my surprise and joy.

She came slipping round the pool, and in a few seconds was by my side. Her clothes were saturated with last night's rain, but though she looked very cold, she did not shiver, a proof that she had not lain down on the hills, but had walked about during the whole night. There was no wildness of the maniac—there was no idiotic stare. But oh the witchery of the gaze!

If one could imagine the look on the face of a wanderer from the cloud-palaces of the sylphs, or the gaze in the eyes of a statue newly animated by the passion of the sculptor who had fashioned it, or the smile on the face of a wondering Eve just created upon the earth—any one of these expressions would, perhaps, give the idea of that on Winifred's face as she stood there.

'May I sit down, Prince?' said she.

'Yes, Winnie,' I replied; 'I've been waiting for you.'

'Been waiting for poor Winnie?' she said, her eyes sparkling anew with pleasure; and she sat down close by my side, gazing hungrily at the food—her hands resting on her lap.

I laid my hand upon one of hers; it was so damp and cold that it made me shudder.

'Why, Winifred,' I said, 'how cold you are!' 'The hills are so cold!' said she, 'so cold when the stars go out, and the red streaks begin to come.'

'May I warm your hands in mine, Winnie?' I said, longing to clasp the dear fingers, but trembling lest anything I might say or do should bring about a repetition of last night's catastrophe.

'Will you, Prince?' said she. 'How very, very kind!' and in a moment the hand was between mine.

Remembering that it was through looking into my eyes that she recognised me in the cottage, I now avoided looking straight into hers. All this time she kept gazing wistfully at the food spread out on the ground.

'Are you hungry, Winifred?' I said.

'Oh yes; so hungry!' said she, shaking her head in a sad meditative way. 'Poor Winifred is so hungry and cold and lonely!'

'Will you breakfast with the Prince of the Mist, Winifred?'

'Oh, may I, Prince?' she asked, her face beaming with delight.

'To be sure you may, Winnie. You may always breakfast with the Prince of the Mist if you like.'

'Always? Always?' she repeated.

'Yes, Winnie,' I said, as I handed her some bread and meat, which she devoured ravenously.

'Yes, dear Winnie,' I continued, handing her a foaming horn of Sinfi's ale, to which she did as full justice as she was doing to the bread and meat. 'Yes, I want you to breakfast with me and dine with me always.'

'Do you mean live with you, Prince?' she asked, looking me dreamily in the face—'live with you behind the white mist? Is this our wedding breakfast, Prince?'

'Yes, Winnie.'

Then her eyes wandered down over her dress, and she said, 'Ah! how strange I did not notice my green fairy kirtle before. And I declare I never felt till this moment the wreath of gold leaves round my forehead. Do they shine much in the sun?'

'They quite dazzle me, Winnie,' I said, arching my hand above my eyes, as if to protect them from the glare.

'Do you have a nice fire there when it's very cold?' she said.

'Yes, Winifred,' I said.

She then sank into silence, while I kept plying her with food.

After she had appeased her hunger she sat looking into the pool, quite unconscious, apparently, of my presence by her side, and lost in a reverie similar to that which I had seen at the cottage.

The form her dementia had taken was unlike anything that I had ever conceived. Madness seemed too coarse a word to denote so wonderful and fascinating a mental derangement. Mivart's comparison to a musical-box recurred to me, and seemed most apt. She was in a waking dream. The peril lay in breaking through that dream and bringing her real life before her. There was a certain cogency of dreamland in all she said and did. And I found that she sank into silent reverie simply because she waited, like a person in sleep, for the current of her thoughts to be directed and dictated by external phenomena. As she sat there gazing in the pool, her hand gradually warming between my two hands, I felt that never when sane, never in her most bewitching moments, had she been so lovable as she was now. This new kind of spell she exercised over me it would be impossible to describe. But it sprang from the expression on her face of that absolute freedom from all self-consciousness which is the great charm in children, combined with the grace and beauty of her own matchless girlhood. A desire to embrace her, to crush her to my breast, seized me like a frenzy.

'Winifred,' I said, 'you are very cold.'

But she was now insensible to sound. I knew from experience now that I must shake her to bring her back to consciousness, for evidently, in her fits of reverie, the sounds falling upon her ear were not conveyed to the brain at all.

I shook her gently, and said, 'The Prince of the Mist.'

She started back to life. My idea had been a happy one. My words had at once sent her thoughts into the right direction for me.

'Pardon me, Prince,' said she, smiling; 'I had forgotten that you were here.'

'Winifred, I've warmed this hand, now give me the other.'

She stretched her other hand across her breast and gave it to me. This brought her entire body close to me, and I said, 'Winnie, you are cold all over. Won't you let the Prince of the Mist put his arms round you and warm you?'

'Oh, I should like it so much,' she said. 'But are you warm, Prince? are you really warm?—your mist is mostly very cold.'

'Quite warm, Winifred,' I said, as with my heart swelling in my breast, and with eyelids closing over my eyes from very joy, I drew her softly upon my breast once more.

'Yes—yes,' I murmured, as the tears gushed from my eyes and dropped upon the soft hair that I was kissing. 'If God will but let me have her thus! I ask for nothing better than to possess a maniac.'

As we sat locked in each other's arms the head of Sinfi appeared round the eastern cliff of the gorge where I had first seen Winifred. The Gypsy had evidently been watching us from there. I perceived that she was signalling to me that I was not to grasp Winifred. Then I saw Sinfi suddenly and excitedly point to the sky over the rock beneath which we sat. I looked up. The upper sky above us was now clear of morning mist, and right over our heads, Winifred's and mine, there hung a little morning cloud like a feather of flickering rosy gold. I looked again towards the corner of jutting rock, but Sinfi's head had disappeared.

'Dear Prince,' said Winifred, 'how delightfully warm you are! How kind of you! But are not your arms a little too tight, dear Prince? Poor Winnie cannot breathe. And this thump, thump, thump, like a—like a—fire-engine—ah!'

Too late I knew what my folly had done. The turbulent action of my heart had had a sympathetic effect upon hers. It seemed as if her senses, if not her mind, had remembered another occasion, when, as she was lying in my arms, the beating of my heart had disturbed her. In one lightning-flash her real life and all its tragedy broke mercilessly in upon her. The idea of the 'Prince of the Mist' fled. She started up and away from me. The awful mimicry of her father's expression spread over her face. With a yell of 'Fy Nhad,' and then a yell of 'Father!' she darted round the pool, and then, bounding up the rugged path like a chamois, disappeared behind a corner of jutting rock.

At the same moment the head of the Gypsy girl reappeared round the eastern cleft of the gorge. Sinfi came quickly up to me and whispered, 'Don't follow.'

'I will,' I said.

'No, you won't,' said she, seizing my wrist with a grip of iron. 'If you do she's done for. Do you know where she is running to? A couple of furlongs up that path there's another that branches off on the right; it ain't more nor a futt-an'-a-half wide along a precipuss more nor a hundred futt deep. She knows it well. She'll make for that. The cuss is on her wuss nor ever, judgin' from the gurn and the flash of her teeth.'

I waited for two or three seconds in the wildest impatience.

'Let's follow her now,' I said.

'No, no,' she whispered, 'not yet, 'less you want to see her tumble down the cliff.' After a few minutes Sinfi and I went up the main pathway. Winnie seemed to have slackened her pace when she was out of sight, for we saw her just turning away on the right at the point indicated by Sinfi. 'Give her time to get along that path,' said she, 'and then she'll be all right.'

In a state of agonised suspense I stood there waiting. At last I said:

'I must go after her. We shall lose her—I know we shall lose her.'

Sinfi demurred a moment, then acceded to my wish, and we went up the main pathway and peered round the corner of the jutting rock where Winifred had last been visible. There, along a ragged shelf bordering a yawning chasm—a shelf that seemed to me scarce wide enough for a human foot—Winifred was running and balancing herself as surely as a bird over the abyss.

'Mind she doesn't turn round sharp and see you,' said the Gypsy. 'If she does she'll lose her head and over she'll fall!'

I crouched and gazed at Winifred as she glided along towards a vast mountain of vapour that was rolling over the chasm close to her. She stood and looked into the floating mass for a moment, and then passed into it and was lost from view.

VI

'Now I can follow her,' said Sinfi; 'but you mustn't try to come along here. Wait till I come back. I suppose you've given her all the breakfiss. Give me a drop of brandy out o' your flask.'

I gave her some brandy and took a long draught of the burning liquor myself, for I was fainting.

'I shall go with you,' I said.

'Dordi,' said the Gypsy, 'how quickly you'd be a-layin' at the bottom there!' and she pointed down into the gulf at our feet.

'I shall go with you,' I said.

'No, you won't,' said the Gypsy doggedly; ''cause I sha'n't go. I shall git round and meet her. I know where we shall strike across her slot. She'll be makin' for Llanberis.'

'I let her escape,' I moaned. 'I had her in my arms once; but you signalled to me not to grip her.'

'If you had ha' grabbed her,' said the Gypsy, 'she'd ha' pulled you along like a feather—she's so mad strong. You go hack to the llyn.'

The Gypsy girl passed along the shelf and was soon lost in the veil of vapour.

I returned to the llyn and threw myself down upon the ground, for my legs sank under me, but the dizziness of fatigue softened the effect of my distress. The rocks and peaks were swinging round my head. Soon I found the Gypsy bending over me.

'I can't find her,' said she. 'We had best make haste and strike across her path as she makes for Llanberis. I have a notion as she's sure to do that.'

As fast as we could scramble along those rugged tracks we made our way to the point where the Gypsy expected that Winifred would pass. We remained for hours, beating about in all directions in search of her,—Sinti every now and then touching her crwth with the bow,—but without any result.

'It's my belief she's gone straight down to Llanberis,' said Sinfi; 'and we'd best lose no time, but go there too.'

We went right to the top of the mountain and rested for a little time on y Wyddfa, Sinfi taking some bread and cheese and ale in the cabin there. Then we descended the other side. I had not sense then to notice the sunset-glories, the peaks of mountains melting into a sky of rose and light-green, over which a phalanx of fiery clouds was filing; and yet I see it all now as I write, and I hear what I did not seem to hear then, the musical chant of a Welsh guide ahead of us, who was conducting a party of happy tourists to Llanberis.

When we reached the village, we spent hours in making searches and inquiries, but could find no trace of her. Oh, the appalling thought of Winifred wandering about all night famishing on the hills! I went to the inn which Sinfi pointed out to me, while she went in quest of some Gypsy friends, who, she said, were stopping in the neighbourhood. She promised to come to me early in the morning, in order that we might renew our search at break of day.

When I turned into bed after supper I said to myself: 'There will be no sleep for me this night.' But I was mistaken. So great was my fatigue that sleep came upon me with a strength that was sudden and irresistible; when the servant came to call me at sunrise, I felt as though I had but just gone to bed. It was, no doubt, this sound sleep, and entire respite from the tension of mind I had undergone, which saved me from another serious illness.

I found the Gypsy already waiting for me below, preparing for the labours before her by making a hearty meal on salt beef and ale.

'Reia,' said she, pointing to the beef with her knife, 'we sha'n't get bite nor sup, 'cept what we carry, either inside or out, for twelve hours,—perhaps not for twenty-four. Before I give up this slot there ain't a path, nor a hill, nor a rock, nor a valley, nor a precipuss as won't feel my fut. Come! set to.'

I took the Gypsy's advice, made as hearty a breakfast as I could, and we left Llanberis in the light of morning. It was not till we had reached and passed a place called Gwastadnant Gate that the path along which we went became really wild and difficult. The Gypsy seemed to know every inch of the country.

We reached a beautiful lake, where Sinfi stopped, and I began to question her as to what was to be our route.

'Winnie know'd,' said she, 'some Welsh folk as fish in this 'ere lake. She might ha' called 'em to mind, poor thing, and come off here. I'm a-goin' to ask about her.'

Sinfi's inquiries here—her inquiries everywhere that day—ended in nothing but blank and cruel disappointment.

Remembering that Winifred's very earliest childhood was passed near Carnarvon, I proposed to the Gypsy that we should go thither at once.

After sleeping again at Llanberis, we went to Carnarvon, but soon returned to the other side of Snowdon, for at Carnarvon we could find no trace of her.

'Oh, Sinfi,' I said; as we stood watching the peculiar bright yellow trout in Lake Ogwen, 'she is starving—starving on the hills—while millions of people are eating, gorging, wasting food. I shall go mad!'

Sinfi looked at me mournfully, and said:

'It's a bad job, reia, but if poor Winnie Wynne's a-starvin' it ain't the fault o' them as happens to ha' got the full belly. There ain't a Romany in Wales, nor there ain't a Gorgio nuther, as wouldn't give Winnie a crust, if wonst we could find her.'

'To think of this great, rich world,' I exclaimed (to myself, not to the Gypsy), 'choke-full of harvest, bursting with grain, while famishing on the hills for a mouthful is she—the one!'

'Reia,' said Sinfi, with much solemnity, 'the world's full o' vittles; what's wanted is jist a hand as can put the vittles and the mouths where they ought to be—cluss togither. That's what the hungry Romany says when he snares a hare or a rabbit.'

We walked on. After a while Sinfi said: 'A Romany knows more o' these here kinds o' things, reia, than a Gorgio does. It's my belief as Winnie Wynne ain't a-starvin' on the hills; she ain't got to starve; she's on'y got to beg her bread. She'll have to do that, of course; but beggin' ain't so bad as starvin', after all! There's some as begs for the love on it. Videy does.'

I knew by this time that it was useless to battle against Sinfi's conviction that the curse would have to be literally fulfilled, so I kept silence. While she was speaking I was suddenly struck by a thought that ought to have come before.

'Sinfi,' I said, 'didn't you know an English lady named Dalrymple, who lodged with Mrs. Davies for some years?'

'Yis,' said Sinfi, 'and I did think o' her. She went to live at Carnarvon. But supposin' that Winnie had gone to the English lady—supposin' that she know'd where to find her—the lady 'ud never ha' let her go away, she was so fond on her. It was Miss Dalrymple as sp'ilt Winnie, a-givin' her lady-notions.'

However, I determined to see Miss Dalrymple, and started alone for Carnarvon at once. By making inquiries at the Carnarvon post-office I found Miss Dalrymple, a pale-faced, careworn lady of extraordinary culture, who evinced the greatest affection for Winifred. She had seen nothing of her, and was much distressed at the fragments of Winifred's story which I thought it well to give her. When she bade me good-bye, she said, 'I know something of your family. I know your mother and aunt. The sweet girl you are seeking is in my judgment one of the most gifted young women living. Her education, as you may be aware, she owes mainly to me. But she took to every kind of intellectual pursuit by instinct. Reared in a poor Welsh cottage as she was, there is, I believe, almost no place in society that she is not fitted to fill.'

On leaving Carnarvon I returned to Sinfi Lovell.

But why should I weary the reader by a detailed account of my wanderings and searchings with my strange guide that day, and the next, and the next? Why should I burthen him with the mental agonies I suffered as Sinfi and I, during the following days, explored the country for miles and miles—right away beyond the Cross Foxes, as far as Dolgelley and the region of Cader Idris? At last, one evening, when I and Rhona Boswell and some of her family were walking down Snowdon towards Llanberis, Sinfi announced her conviction that Winifred was no longer in the Snowdon region at all, perhaps not even in Wales at all.

'You mean, I suppose, that she is dead,' I said.

'Dead?' said Sinfi, the mysterious sibylline look returning immediately to her face, that had just seemed so frank and simple. 'She ain't got to die; she's only got to beg. But I shall ha' to leave you now. I can't do you no more good. And besides, my daddy's goin' into the Eastern Counties with the Welsh ponies, and so is Jasper Bozzell and Rhona. Videy and me are goin' too, in course.'

With deep regret and dismay I felt that I must part from her. How well I remember that evening. I feel as now I write the delicious summer breeze of Snowdon blowing on my forehead. The sky, which for some time had been growing very rich, grew at every moment rarer in colour, and glassed itself in the llyns which shone with an enjoyment of the beauty like the magic mirrors of Snowdonian spirits. The loveliness indeed was so bewitching that one or two of the Gypsies—a race who are, as I had already noticed, among the few uncultivated people that show a susceptibility to the beauties of nature—gave a long sigh of pleasure, and lingered at the llyn of the triple echo, to see how the soft iridescent opal brightened and shifted into sapphire and orange, and then into green and gold. As a small requital of her valuable services I offered her what money I had about me, and promised to send as much more as she might require as soon as I reached the hotel at Dolgelley, where at the moment my portmanteau was lying in the landlord's charge.

'Me take money for tryin' to find my sister, Winnie Wynne?' said Sinfi, in astonishment more than in anger. 'Seein', reia, as I'd jist sell everythink I've got to find her, I should like to know how many gold balansers [sovereigns] 'ud pay me. No, reia, Winnie Wynne ain't in Wales at all, else I'd never give up this patrin-chase. So fare ye well;' and she held out her hand, which I grasped, reluctant to let it go.

'Fare ye well, reia,' she repeated, as she walked swiftly away; 'I wonder whether we shall ever meet agin.'

'Indeed, I hope so,' I said.

Her sister Videy, who with Rhona Boswell was walking near us, was present at the parting—a bright-eyed, dark-skinned little girl, a head shorter than Sinfi. I saw Videy's eyes glisten greedily at sight of the gold, and, after we had parted, I was not at all surprised, though I knew her father, Panuel Lovell, a frequenter of Raxton fairs, to be a man of means, when she came back and said, with a coquettish smile,

'Give the bright balansers to Lady Sinfi's poor sister, my rei; give the balansers to the poor Gypsy, my rei.'

Rhona, however, instead of joining Videy in the prayer for backsheesh, ran down the path in the footsteps of Sinfi.

What money I had about me I was carrying loose in my waistcoat pocket, and I pulled it out, gold and silver together. I picked out the sovereigns (five) and gave them to her, retaining half-a-sovereign and the silver for my use before returning to the hotel at Dolgelley. Videy took the sovereigns and then pointed, with a dazzling smile, to the half-sovereign, saying, 'Give Lady Sinfi's poor sister the posh balanser [half-sovereign], my rei.'

I gave her the half-sovereign,' when she immediately pointed to a half-crown in my hand, and said, 'Give the poor Gypsy the posh-courna, my rei.'

So grateful was I to the very name of Lovell, that I was hesitating whether to do this, when I was suddenly aware of the presence of Sinfi, who had returned with Rhona. In a moment Videy's wrist was in a grip I had become familiar with, and the money fell to the ground. Sinfi pointed to the money and said some words in Romany. Videy stooped and picked the coins up in evident alarm. Sinfi then said some more words in Romany, whereupon Videy held out the money to me. I felt it best to receive it, though Sinfi never once looked at me; and I could not tell what expression her own honest face wore, whether of deadly anger or mortal shame. The two sisters walked off in silence together, while Rhona set up a kind of war-dance behind them, and the three went down the path.

In a few minutes Sinfi again returned and, pointing in great excitement to the sunset sky, cried, 'Look, look! The Dukkeripen of the trushul.' [Footnote] And indeed, the sunset was now making a spectacle such as might have aroused a spasm of admiration in the most prosaic breast. As I looked at it and then turned to look at Sinfi's noble features, illumined and spiritualised by a light that seemed more than earthly, a new feeling came upon me as though y Wyddfa and the clouds were joining in a prophecy of hope.

[Footnote: Cross.]

VII

After losing Sinfi I hired some men to assist me in my search. Day after day did we continue the quest; but no trace of Winifred could be found. The universal opinion was that she had taken sudden alarm at something, lost her foothold, and fallen down a precipice, as so many unfortunate tourists had done in North Wales. One day I and one of my men met, on a spur of the Glyder, the tourist of the flint implements with whom I had conversed at Bettws y Coed. He was alone, geologising or else searching for flint implements on the hills. Evidently my haggard appearance startled him. But when he learnt what was my trouble he became deeply interested. He told me that one day after our meeting at 'The Royal Oak,' Bettws y Coed, he had met a wild-looking girl as he was using his geologist's hammer on the mountains. She was bareheaded, and had taken fright at him, and had run madly in the direction of the most dangerous chasm on the range; he had pursued her, hoping to save her from destruction, but lost sight of her close to the chasm's brink. The expression on his face told me what his thoughts were as to her fate. He accompanied me to the chasm. It was indeed a dreadful place. We got to the bottom by a winding path, and searched till dusk among the rocks and torrents, finding nothing. But I felt that in wild and ragged pits like those, covered here and there with rough and shaggy brushwood, and full of wild cascades and deep pools, a body might well be concealed till doomsday.

My kind-hearted companion accompanied me for some miles, and did his best to dispel my gloom by his lively and intelligent talk. We parted at Pen y Gwryd. I never saw him again. I never knew his name. Should these lines ever come beneath his eyes he will know that though the great ocean of human life rolls between his life-vessel and mine, I have not forgotten how and where once we touched.

But how could I rest? Though Hope herself was laughing my hopes to scorn, how could I rest? How could I cease to search?

Bitter as it was to wander about the hills teasing my soul by delusions which other people must fain smile at, it would have been more bitter still to accept for certainty the intolerable truth that Winifred had died famished, or that her beloved body was a mangled corpse at the bottom of a cliff. If the reader does not understand this, it is because he finds it impossible to understand a sorrow like mine. I refused to return to Raxton, and took Mrs. Davies's cottage, which was unoccupied, and lived there throughout the autumn. Every day, wet or dry, I used to sally out on the Snowdonian range, just as though she had been lost but yesterday, making inquiries, bribing the good-natured Welsh people (who needed no bribing) to aid me in a search which to them must have seemed monomaniacal.

The peasants and farmers all knew me. 'Sut mae dy galon? (How is thy heart?)' they would say in the beautiful Welsh phrase as I met them. 'How is my heart, indeed!' I would sigh as I went on my way.

Before I went to Wales in search of Winifred I had never set foot in the Principality. Before I left it there was scarcely a Welshman who knew more familiarly than I every mile of the Snowdonian country. Never a trace of Winifred could I find.

At the end of the autumn I left the cottage and removed to Pen y Gwryd, as a comparatively easy point from which I could reach the mountain llyn where I had breakfasted with Winifred on that morning. Afterwards I took up my abode at a fishing-inn, and here I stayed the winter through—scarcely hoping to find her now, yet chained to Snowdon. After my labours during the day, scrambling among slippery boulders and rugged rocks, crossing swollen torrent-beds, amid rain and ice and snow and mist such as frightened away the Welsh themselves—after thus wandering, because I could not leave the region, it was a comfort to me to turn into the low, black-beamed room of the fishing-inn, with drying hams, flitches of bacon, and fishing-rods for decorations, and hear the simple-hearted Cymric folk talking, sometimes in Welsh, sometimes in English, but always with that kindness and that courtesy which go to make the poetry of Welsh common life.

Meantime, I had, as I need scarcely say, spared neither trouble nor expense in advertising for information about Winifred in the Welsh and the West of England newspapers. I offered rewards for her discovery, and the result was merely that I was pestered by letters from people (some of them tourists of education) suggesting traces and clues of so wild, and often of so fantastic a kind, that I arrived at the conviction that of all man's faculties his imagination is the most lawless, and at the same time the most powerful. It was perfectly inconceivable to me that the writers of some of these letters were not themselves demented, so wild or so fanciful were the clues they suggested. Yet. when I came to meet them and talk with them (as I sometimes did), I found these correspondents to be of the ordinary prosaic British type. All my efforts were to no purpose.

Among my longer journeys from the fishing-inn, the most frequent were those to Holywell, near Flint, to the Well of St. Winifred—the reader need not be told why. He will recollect how little Winnie, while plying me with strawberries, had sagely recommended the holy water of this famous well as a 'cure for crutches.' She had actually brought me some of it in a lemonade bottle when she returned to Raxton after her first absence, and had insisted on rubbing my ankle with it. She had, as I afterwards learnt from her father, importuned and at last induced her aunt (evidently a good-natured and worthy soul) to take her to visit a friend at Holywell, a journey of many miles, for the purpose of bringing home with her a bottle of the holy water. Whenever any ascent of the gangways had proved to be more successful than usual, Winifred had attributed the good luck to the virtues contained in her lemonade bottle. Ah! superstition seemed pretty enough then.

At first in the forlorn hope that memory might have attracted her thither, and afterwards because there was a fascination for me in the well on account of its association with her, my pilgrimages to Holywell were as frequent as those of any of the afflicted devotees of the olden time, whose crutches left behind testified to the genuineness of the Saint's pretensions. Into that well Winnie's innocent young eyes had gazed—gazed in the full belief that the holy water would cure me—gazed in the full belief that the crimson stains made by the byssus on the stones were stains left by her martyr-namesake's blood. Where had she stood when she came and looked into the well and the rivulet? On what exact spot had rested her feet—those little rosy feet that on the sea-sands used to flash through the receding foam as she chased the ebbing billows to amuse me, while I sat between my crutches in the cove looking on? It was, I found, possible to gaze in that water till it seemed alive with her—seemed to hold the reflection of the little face which years ago peered anxiously into it for the behoof of the crippled child-lover pining for her at Raxton, and unable to 'get up or down the gangways without her.'

Holywell grew to have a fascination for me, and in the following spring I left the fishing-inn beneath Snowdon, and took rooms in this interesting old town.

VIII

One day, near the rivulet that runs from St. Winifred's Well, I suddenly encountered Sinfi Lovell.

'Sinfi,' I said, 'she's dead, she's surely dead.'

'I tell ye, brother, she ain't got to die!' said Sinfi, as she came and stood beside me. 'Winnie Wynne's on'y got to beg her bread. She's alive.'

'Where is she?' I cried. 'Oh, Sinfi, I shall go mad!'

'There you're too fast for me, brother,' said she, 'when you ask me where she is; but she's alive, and I ain't come quite emp'y-handed of news about her, brother.'

'Oh, tell me!' said I.

'Well,' said Sinfi, 'I've just met one of our people, Euri Lovell, as says that, the very mornin' after we seed her on the hills, he met her close to Carnarvon at break of day.'

'Then she did go to Carnarvon,' I said. 'What a distance for those dear feet!'

'Euri knowed her by sight,' said Sinfi, 'but didn't know about her bein' under the cuss, so he jist let her pass, sayin' to hisself, "She looks jist like a crazy wench this mornin', does Winnie Wynne." Euri was a-goin' through Carnarvon to Bangor, on to Conway and Chester, and never heerd a word about her bein' lost till he got back, six weeks ago.'

'I must go to Carnarvon at once,' said I.

'No use, brother,' said Sinfi. 'If I han't pretty well worked Carnarvon, it's a pity. I've bin there the last three weeks on the patrin-chase, and not a patrin could I find. It's my belief as she never went into Carnarvon town at all, but turned off and went into Llanbeblig churchyard.'

'Why do you think so, Sinfi?'

''Cause her aunt, bein' a Carnarvon woman, was buried among her own kin in Llanbeblig churchyard.

Leastwise, you won't find a ghose of a trace on her at Carnarvon, and it'll be a long kind of a wild-goose chase from here; but if you will go, go you must.'

She could not dissuade me from starting for Carnarvon at once; and, as I would go, she seemed to take it as a matter of course that she must accompany me. Our journey was partly by coach and partly afoot.

My first impulse on nearing Carnarvon was to go—I could not have said why—to Llanbeblig churchyard.

Among a group of graves of the Davieses we easily found that of Winifred's aunt, beneath a newly-planted arbutus tree. After looking at the modest mound for some time, and wondering where Winifred had stood when the coffin was lowered—as I had wondered where she had stood at St. Winifred's Well—I roamed about the churchyard with Sinfi in silence for a time.