t 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