hs and months dragged by, and brought no trace of Winifred.

IV

THE LEADER OF THE AYLWINIANS

I

One day as Sinfi and I were strolling through the lovely glades
between Capel Curig and Bettws y Coed, on our way to a fishing-place,
we sat down by a stream to eat some bread and cheese we had brought
with us.

The sunlight, as it broke here and there between the thick foliage,
was playing upon the little cascades in such magical fashion--turning
the water into a torrent that seemed as though molten rubies and
sapphires and opals were ablaze in one dancing faery stream,--that
even the dark tragedy of human life seemed enveloped for a moment in
an atmosphere of poetry and beauty. Sinfi gazed at it silently, then
she said:

'This is the very place where Winnie wonst tried to save a hernshaw
as wur wounded. She wur tryin' to ketch hold on it, as the water wur
carryin' it along, and he pretty nigh beat her to death wi' his wings
for her pains. It wur then as she come an' stayed along o' us for a
bit, an' she got to be as fond o' my crwth as you be's, an' she used
to say that if there wur any music as 'ud draw her sperrit hack to
the airth arter she wur dead it 'ud be the sound o' my crwth; but
there she wur wrong as wrong could be: Romany music couldn't never
touch Gorgio sperrit; 'tain't a bit likely. But it can draw her
livin' mullo [wraith].' And as she spoke she began to play her crwth
_pizzicato_ and to sing the opening bars of the old Welsh incantation
which I had heard on Snowdon on that never-to-be-forgotten morning.

This, as usual, sent my mind at once back to the picture of Fenella
Stanley calling round her by the aid of her music the spirits of
Snowdon. And then a strange hallucination came upon me, that made me
clutch at Sinfi's arm. Close by her, reflected in a little glassy
pool divided off from the current by a ring of stones, two blue eyes
seemed gazing. Then the face and the entire figure of Winifred
appeared, but Winifred dressed as a beggar girl in rags, Winifred
standing at a street corner holding out matches for sale.

'Winifred!' I exclaimed; and then the hallucination passed, and
Sinfi's features were reflected in the water. My exclamation had the
strangest effect upon Sinfi. Her lips, which usually wore a
peculiarly proud and fearless curve, quivered, and were losing the
brilliant rosebud redness which mostly characterised them. The little
blue tattoo rosettes at the corners of her mou