from one of
the Lees as to the traditions and superstitions of the Hungarian
Gypsies with regard to people suffering from dementia set me
thinking; and at last I came to the conclusion that if I really
believed Winifred to have taken shelter among the Romanies, it would
be absurd not to follow up a band like these Hungarians. Accordingly
I changed my course, and followed them up. On coming upon them in a
famous English camping-place I found the Lovells and the Boswells.
Rhona, dressed in gorgeous attire, evidently purchased at some
second-hand shop, was rehearsing the shawl-dance for a great occasion
at a neighbouring fair. But no Winifred.

My health was now much impaired by sleeplessness (the inevitable
result of my anxiety), and by a narcotic, which from the commencement
of my troubles I had been in the habit of taking in ever-increasing
doses--a terrible narcotic, one of whose multitudinous effects is
that of sending all the patient's thoughts circling around one
central idea like planets round the sun. Painful and agonising as had
been my suspense,--my oscillation between hope and dread,--during my
wanderings with the Lovells, these wanderings had not been without
their moments of comfort, for all of which I had been indebted to
Sinfi. She would sit with me in an English lane, under a hedge or
tree, on a balmy summer evening, or among the primroses, wild
hyacinths, buttercups and daisies of the sweet meadows, chattering
her reminiscences of Winifred. She would mostly end by saying:
'Winnie was very fond on ye, brother, and we shall find her yit. The
Golden Hand on Snowdon wasn't there for nothink. The dukkeripen says
you'll marry her yit; a love like yourn can follow the tryenest
patrin as ever wur laid.' Then she would play on her crwth and say,
'Ah, brother, I shall be able to make this crwth bring ye a sight o'
Winnie's livin' mullo if she's alive, and there ain't a sperrit of
the hills as wouldn't answer to it.'

Of Gorgios generally, however, Sinfi had at heart a feeling somewhat
akin to dread. I could not understand it.

'Why do you dislike the Gorgios, Sinfi?' I said to her one day on
Lake Ogwen, after the return of the Lovells to Wales. We were
trout-fishing from a boat anchored to a heavy block of granite which
she had fastened to a rope and heaved overboard with a strength that
would have surpassed that of most Englishwomen.

'That's nuther here nor there, brother,' she replied mysteriously. So
mont