goin’ to tell you’ll show we’re goin’ to part for ever an’ ever.  As sure as ever the Golden Hand opened over Winnie Wynne’s head an’ yourn on Snowdon, so sure did I feel that you two ’ud be married, even when it seemed to you that she must he dead.  An’ as sure as ever my mammy said I must beware o’ Gorgios, so sure was I that you wur the very Gorgio as wur to break the Romany chi’s heart—­if that Romany chi’s heart hadn’t been Sinfi Lovell’s.  You hadn’t been my pal long afore I know’d that.  Arter I had been with you a-lookin’ for Winnie or fishin’ in the brooks, many’s the time, when I lay in the tent with the star-light a-shinin’ through the chinks in the tent’s mouth, that I’ve said to myself, “The very Gorgio as my mother seed a-comin’ to the Lovells when she penned my dukkerin, he’s asleep in his livin’-waggin not five yards off.”  That’s what made me seem so strange to you at times, thinkin’ o’ my mammy’s words, an’ sayin’ “I will, I will.”  An’ now, brother, fare you well.’

‘But you must bid Winnie good-bye,’ I said, as I saw her returning.

‘Better not,’ said she.  ’You tell her I’ve changed my mind about goin’ to Carnarvon.  She’ll think we shall meet again, but we sha’n’t.  Tell her that they expect you and her at the inn at Llanberis.  Rhona will be there to-night with Winnie’s clo’es and things.’

‘Sinfi,’ I said, ’I cannot part from you thus.  I should be miserable all my days.  No man ever had such a noble, self-sacrificing friend as you.  I cannot give you up.  In a few days I shall go to the tents and see you and Rhona, and my old friends, Panuel and Jericho; I shall indeed, Sinfi.  I mean to do it.’

‘No, no,’ cried Sinfi; ‘everythink says “No” to that; the clouds an’ the stars says “No,” an’ the win’ says “No,” and the shine and the shadows says “No,” and the Romany Sap says “No.”  An’ I shall send your livin’-waggin away, reia; yis, I shall send it arter you, Hal, and your two beautiful gries; an’ I shall tell my daddy—­as never conterdicks his chavi in nothink, ‘cos she’s took the seein’ eye from Shuri Lovell—­I shall tell my dear daddy as no Gorgio and no Gorgie, no lad an’ no wench as ever wur bred o’ Gorgio blood an’ bones, mustn’t never live with our breed no more.  That’s what I shall tell my dear daddy; an’ why? an’ why? ‘cos that’s what my mammy comes an’ tells me every night, wakin’ an’ sleepin’—­that’s what she comes an’ tells me, reia, in the waggin an’ in the tent, an’ aneath the sun an’ aneath the stars—­an’ that’s what the fiery eyes of the Romany Sap says out o’ the ferns an’ the grass, an’ in the Londra streets, whenever I thinks o’ you.  “The kair is kushto for the kairengro, but for the Romany the open air.” [Footnote] That’s what my mammy used to say.’

[Footnote:  The house is good for the house-dweller, the open air for the Gypsy.]

She then left me and descended the path to Capel Curig, and was soon out of sight.

XVIII