‘This is the place,’ said the Gypsy; ’it used to be called in old times the haunted llyn, because when you sings the Welsh dukkerin gillie here or plays it on a crwth, the Knockers answers it.  I dare say you’ve heard o’ what the Gorgios call the triple echo o’ Llyn Ddu’r Arddu.  Well, it’s somethin’ like that, only bein’ done by the knocking sperrits, it’s grander and don’t come ’cept when they hears the Welsh dukkerin gillie.  Now, you must hide yourself somewheres while I go and touch the crwth in her favourite place.  I think she’ll come to that.  I wish though I hadn’t brought ye,’ she continued, looking at me meditatively; ’you’re a little winded a-ready, and we ain’t begun the rough climbing at all.  Up to this ’ere pool Winnie and me and Rhona Boswell used to climb when we was children; it needed longer legs nor ourn to get farther up, and you’re winded a-ready.  If she should come on you suddent, she’s liker than not to run for a mile or more up that path where we’ve just been and then to jump down one of them chasms you’ve just seed.  But if she does pop on ye, don’t you try to grab her, whatever you do; leave me alone for that.  You ain’t got strength enough to grab a hare; you ought to be in bed.  Besides, she won’t be skeared at me.  But,’ she continued, turning round to look at the vast circuit of peaks stretching away as far as the eye could reach, ’we shall have to ketch her to-day somehow.  She’ll never go back to the cottage where you went and skeared her; and if she don’t have a fall, she’ll run about these here hills till she drops.  We shall have to ketch her to-day somehow.  I’m in hopes she’ll come to the sound of my crwth, she’s so uncommon fond on it; and if she don’t come in the flesh, p’rhaps her livin’ mullo will come, and that’ll show she’s alive.’

She placed me in a crevice overlooking the small lake, or pool, which on the opposite side was enclosed in a gorge, opening only by a cleft to the east.  Then she unburdened herself of a wallet containing the breakfast, saying, ‘When I come back we’ll fall to and breakfiss.’  She then, as though she were following the trail, made a circuit of the pool and disappeared through the gorge.  All round the pool there was a narrow ragged ledge leading to this eastern opening.  I stood concealed in my crevice and looked at the peaks, or rather at the vast masses of billowy vapours enveloping them, as they sometimes boiled and sometimes blazed, shaking—­when the sun struck one and then another—­from brilliant amethyst to vermilion, shot occasionally with purple, or gold, or blue.

A radiance now came pouring through the eastern opening down the gorge or cwm itself, and soon the light vapours floating about the pool were turned to sailing gauzes, all quivering with different dyes, as though a rainbow had become torn from the sky and woven into gossamer hangings and set adrift.

Fatigue was beginning to numb my senses and to conquer my brain.  The acuteness of my mental anguish had consumed itself in its own intense fires.  The idea of Winifred’s danger became more remote.  The mist-pageants of the morning seemed somehow to emanate from Winnie.