‘Winnie,’ I said, ’tell me this strange story about yourself.  Tell it in your own way, and do not let me interrupt you by a word.  Whenever you see that I am about to speak, stop me—­put your hand over my mouth.’

‘But where am I to begin?’

’Begin from our first meeting on the sands on the night of the landslip.’

But while I spoke I thought I observed her looking at the breakfast provided by Sinfi with something like the same wistful expression that was on her face on that morning forgotten by her but remembered by me so well, when she breakfasted so heartily on the same spot.

‘Winnie,’ I said, ’this mountain air has given me a voracious appetite.  I wonder whether you could manage to eat some of these good things provided by our theatrical manageress?’

‘I wonder whether I could,’ said Winnie; ’I’ll try—­if you’ll ask me no questions, but talk about Snowdon and watch the changes of the glorious morning.  But we must call Sinfi.’

’No, no.  I want to talk to you alone first.  By the time your story is over I at least shall be ready for another breakfast, and then we will call her.’

This was agreed upon, and I sat down to my second breakfast with Winnie beside Knockers’ Llyn.  I sat with my face opposite to the llyn, and we had scarcely begun when I noticed Sinfi’s face peeping round a corner of the little gorge.  Winnie’s back being turned from the llyn she did not see Sinfi, who gave me a sign that her part of that performance was to be looker-on.

I have not time to dwell upon what was said and done during our breakfast in this romantic place, and under these more than romantic circumstances.  During the whole of the time the Knockers kept up their knockings, and it really seemed as though the good-natured goblins were expressing their welcome to the child of y Wyddfa.

XV

THE DAUGHTER OF SNOWDON’S STORY

I

After the breakfast was ended Winifred went over the entire drama of that night of the landslip as far as she knew it.  There was not an important incident that she missed.  Every detail of her narrative was so vividly given that I lived it all over again.  She recalled our meeting on the sands, and my inexplicable bearing when she told me of the seaman’s present of precious stones to her father.  She dwelt upon my mysterious conduct in insisting upon our ascending the cliff by different gangways.  She recalled her picking up from the sands a parchment scroll and spelling out by the moonlight the words of the curse it called down upon the head of any one who should violate the tomb from which the parchment and the jewel had been stolen, but as she repeated the words of the curse she was evidently unconscious of the tremendous import of the words in regard to herself and her father.  She told me of her desire to