She then drew the bow across the crwth.  The instrument at first seemed to chatter with her agitation.  I waited in breathless suspense.  At last there came clearly from her crwth the wild air I had already heard on Snowdon.  Then the sound of the instrument ceased save for the drone of the two bottom strings, and Sinfi’s voice leapt out and I heard the words of what she called the Welsh dukkering gillie.

As I listened and looked over the wide-stretching panorama before me, I felt my very flesh answering to every vibration; and when the song stopped and I suddenly heard Sinfi call out, ‘Look, brother!’ I felt that my own being, physical and mental, had passed into a new phase, and that resistance to some mighty power governing my blood was impossible.

’Look straight afore you, brother, and you’ll see Winnie’s face.  She’s alive, brother, and the dukkeripen of the Golden Hand will come true, and mine will come true.  Oh, mammy, mammy!’

At first I saw nothing, but after a while two blue eyes seemed gazing at me as through a veil of evening haze.  They were looking straight at me, those beloved eyes—­they were sparkling with childish happiness as they had sparkled through the vapours of the pool when she walked towards me that morning on the brink of Knockers’ Llyn.

Starting up and throwing up my arms, I cried, ‘My darling!’ The vision vanished.  Then turning round, I looked at Sinfi.  She seemed listening to a voice I could not hear—­her face was pale with emotion.  I could hear her breath coming and going heavily; her bosom rose and fell, and the necklace of coral and gold coins around her throat trembled like a shuddering snake while she murmured, ’My dukkeripen!  Yes, mammy, I’ve gone ag’in you and broke my promise, and this is the very Gorgio as you meant.’

‘Call the vision back,’ I said; ‘play the air again, dear Sinfi.’

She sprang in front of me, and seizing one of my wrists, she gazed in my face, and said, ’Yes, it’s “dear Sinfi”!  You wants dear Sinfi to fiddle the Gorgie’s livin’ mullo back to you.’

I looked into the dark eyes, lately so kind.  I did not know them.  They were dilated and grown red-brown in hue, like the scorched colour of a North African lion’s mane, and along the eyelashes a phosphorescent light seemed to play.  What did it mean?  Was it indeed Sinfi standing there, rigid as a column, with a clenched brown fist drawn up to the broad, heaving breast, till the knuckles shone white, as if about to strike me?  What made her throw out her arms as if struggling desperately with the air, or with some unseen foe who was binding her with chains?

I stood astounded, watching her, as she gradually calmed down and became herself again; but I was deeply perplexed and deeply troubled.

After a while she said, ‘Let’s go back to “the Place,"’ and without waiting for my acquiescence, she strode along down the path towards Beddgelert.