’This is the very place where Winnie wonst tried to save a hernshaw as wur wounded.  She wur tryin’ to ketch hold on it, as the water wur carryin’ it along, and he pretty nigh beat her to death wi’ his wings for her pains.  It wur then as she come an’ stayed along o’ us for a bit, an’ she got to be as fond o’ my crwth as you be’s, an’ she used to say that if there wur any music as ’ud draw her sperrit hack to the airth arter she wur dead it ‘ud be the sound o’ my crwth; but there she wur wrong as wrong could be:  Romany music couldn’t never touch Gorgio sperrit; ’tain’t a bit likely.  But it can draw her livin’ mullo [wraith].’  And as she spoke she began to play her crwth pizzicato and to sing the opening bars of the old Welsh incantation which I had heard on Snowdon on that never-to-be-forgotten morning.

This, as usual, sent my mind at once back to the picture of Fenella Stanley calling round her by the aid of her music the spirits of Snowdon.  And then a strange hallucination came upon me, that made me clutch at Sinfi’s arm.  Close by her, reflected in a little glassy pool divided off from the current by a ring of stones, two blue eyes seemed gazing.  Then the face and the entire figure of Winifred appeared, but Winifred dressed as a beggar girl in rags, Winifred standing at a street corner holding out matches for sale.

‘Winifred!’ I exclaimed; and then the hallucination passed, and Sinfi’s features were reflected in the water.  My exclamation had the strangest effect upon Sinfi.  Her lips, which usually wore a peculiarly proud and fearless curve, quivered, and were losing the brilliant rosebud redness which mostly characterised them.  The little blue tattoo rosettes at the corners of her mouth seemed to be growing more distinct as she gazed in the water through eyes dark and mysterious as Night’s, but, like Night’s own eyes, ready, I thought, to call up the throbbing fires of a million stars.

‘What made you cry out “Winifred"?’ she said, as the music ceased.

’What you told me about the spirits following the crwth was causing the strangest dream,’ I answered.  ’I thought I saw Winnie’s face reflected in the water, and I thought she was in awful distress.  And all the time it was your face.’

‘That wur her livin’ mullo,’ said Sinfi solemnly.

Convinced though I was that the hallucination was the natural result of Sinfi’s harping upon the literal fulfilment of the curse, it depressed me greatly.

Close to this beautiful spot we came suddenly upon two tourists sketching.  And now occurred one of those surprises of which I have found that real life is far more full than any fiction dares to be.  As we passed the artists, I heard one call out to the other, with a ‘burr’ which I will not attempt to render, having never lived in the ‘Black Country’: 

’You have a true eye for composition; what do you think of this tree?’

The speaker’s remarkable appearance attracted my attention.