h thought my mind was becoming unhinged.

One night, as I lay thinking over the insoluble mystery of Winifred's
disappearance, I was struck by a sudden thought that caused me to
leap from my bed. What could have led the official in Scotland Yard
to connect Winifred with Gypsies? I had simply told him of her
disappearance on Snowdon, and her reappearance afterwards near the
theatre. Not one word had I said to him about her early relations
with Gypsies. I was impatient for the daylight, in order that I might
go to Scotland Yard again. When I did so and saw the official, I
asked him without preamble what had caused him to connect the missing
girl I was seeking with the Gypsies.

'The little fancy baskets she was selling,' said he. 'They are often
made by Gypsies.'

'Of course they are,' I said, hurrying away. 'Why did I not think of
this?'

In fact I had, during our wanderings over England and Wales, often
seen Sinfi's sister Videy and Rhona Boswell weaving such baskets.
Winifred, after all, might be among the Gypsies, and the crafty Videy
Lovell might have some mysterious connection with her; for she
detested me as much as she loved the gold 'balansers' she could
wheedle out of me. Moreover, there were in England the Hungarian
Gypsies, with their notions about demented girls, and the Lovells,
owing to Sinfi's musical proclivities, were just now much connected
with a Hungarian troupe.

VII

SINFI'S DUKKERIPEN

I

The Gypsies I had never seen since leaving them in Wales, and I knew
that by this time they were either making their circuit of the
English fairs or located in a certain romantic spot called Gypsy
Dell, near Rington Manor, the property of my kinsman Percy Aylwin,
whither they often went after the earlier fairs were over.

The next evening I went to the Great Eastern Railway station, and
taking the train to Rington I walked to Gypsy Dell, where I found the
Lovells and Boswells.

Familiar as I was with, the better class of Welsh Gypsies, the camp
here was the best display of Romany well-being I had ever seen. It
would, indeed, have surprised those who associate all Gypsy life with
the squalor which in England, and especially near London, marks the
life of the mongrel wanderers who are so often called Gypsies. In a
lovely dingle, skirted by a winding, willow-bordered river, and
dotted here and there with clumps of hawthorn, were ranged the
'living-waggons' of those trading Romanies who had accom