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