‘No one is worthy to haunt such a scene as this,’ I murmured, sinking against the rock, ’but Winifred—­so beautiful of body and pure of soul.  Would that I were indeed her “Prince of the Mist,” and that we could die here together with Sinfi’s strains in our ears.’

Then I felt coming over me strange influences which afterwards became familiar to me—­influences which I can only call the spells of Snowdon.  They were far more intense than those strange, sweet, wild, mesmeric throbs which I used to feel in Graylingham Wood, and which my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, seems also to have known, but they were akin to them.  Then came the sound of Sinfi’s crwth and song, and in the distance repetitions of it, as though the spirits of Snowdon were, in very truth, joining in a chorus.

At once a marvellous change came over me.  I seemed to be listening to my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, and not to Sinfi Lovell.  I was hearing that strain which in my childhood I had so often tried to imagine, and it was conjuring up the morning sylphs of the mountain air and all the ‘flower-sprites’ and ‘sunshine elves’ of Snowdon.

V

I shook off the spell when the music ceased; then I began to wonder why the Gypsy did not return.  I was now faint and almost famished for want of food.  I opened the Gypsy’s wallet.  There was the substantial and tempting breakfast she had brought from the cottage cupboard—­cold beef and bread, and ale.  I spread the breakfast on the ground.

Scarcely had I done so when a figure appeared at the opening of the gorge and caught the ruddy flood of light.  It was Winifred, bare-headed.  I knew it was she, and I waited in breathless suspense, crouching close up into the crevice, dreading lest she should see me and be frightened away.  She stood in the eastern cleft of the gorge against the sun for fully half a minute, looking around as a stag might look that was trying to give the hunters the slip.

‘She has seen the Gypsy,’ I thought, ‘and been scared by her.’  Then she came down and glided along the side of the pool.  At first she did not see me, though she stood opposite and stopped, while the opalescent vapours from the pool steamed around her, and she shone as through a glittering veil, her eyes flashing like sapphires.  The palpitation of my heart choked me; I dared not stir, I dared not speak; the slightest movement or the slightest sound might cause her to start away.  There was she whom I had travelled and toiled to find—­there was she, so close to me, and yet must I let her pass and perhaps lose her after all—­for ever?

Where was the Gypsy girl?  I was in an agony of desire to see her or hear her crwth, and yet her approach might frighten Winifred to her destruction.

But Winifred, who had now seen me, did not bound away with that heart-quelling yell of hers which I had dreaded.  No, I perceived to my astonishment that the flash of the eyes was not of alarm, but of greeting to me—­pleasure at seeing me!  She came close to the water, and then I saw a smile on her face through the misty film—­a flash of shining teeth.