My health was now much impaired by sleeplessness (the inevitable result of my anxiety), and by a narcotic, which from the commencement of my troubles I had been in the habit of taking in ever-increasing doses—­a terrible narcotic, one of whose multitudinous effects is that of sending all the patient’s thoughts circling around one central idea like planets round the sun.  Painful and agonising as had been my suspense,—­my oscillation between hope and dread,—­during my wanderings with the Lovells, these wanderings had not been without their moments of comfort, for all of which I had been indebted to Sinfi.  She would sit with me in an English lane, under a hedge or tree, on a balmy summer evening, or among the primroses, wild hyacinths, buttercups and daisies of the sweet meadows, chattering her reminiscences of Winifred.  She would mostly end by saying:  ’Winnie was very fond on ye, brother, and we shall find her yit.  The Golden Hand on Snowdon wasn’t there for nothink.  The dukkeripen says you’ll marry her yit; a love like yourn can follow the tryenest patrin as ever wur laid.’  Then she would play on her crwth and say, ‘Ah, brother, I shall be able to make this crwth bring ye a sight o’ Winnie’s livin’ mullo if she’s alive, and there ain’t a sperrit of the hills as wouldn’t answer to it.’

Of Gorgios generally, however, Sinfi had at heart a feeling somewhat akin to dread.  I could not understand it.

‘Why do you dislike the Gorgios, Sinfi?’ I said to her one day on Lake Ogwen, after the return of the Lovells to Wales.  We were trout-fishing from a boat anchored to a heavy block of granite which she had fastened to a rope and heaved overboard with a strength that would have surpassed that of most Englishwomen.

‘That’s nuther here nor there, brother,’ she replied mysteriously.  So months and months dragged by, and brought no trace of Winifred.

IV

THE LEADER OF THE AYLWINIANS

I

One day as Sinfi and I were strolling through the lovely glades between Capel Curig and Bettws y Coed, on our way to a fishing-place, we sat down by a stream to eat some bread and cheese we had brought with us.

The sunlight, as it broke here and there between the thick foliage, was playing upon the little cascades in such magical fashion—­turning the water into a torrent that seemed as though molten rubies and sapphires and opals were ablaze in one dancing faery stream,—­that even the dark tragedy of human life seemed enveloped for a moment in an atmosphere of poetry and beauty.  Sinfi gazed at it silently, then she said: