’You must be sure to go to meet her at the cottage to-morrow night, else you’ll be too late.’

‘Why too late?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ said Rhona, ’I can’t say as I knows why ezackly.  But I know she’s bin’ an’ bought beautiful dresses at Chester, or somewheres,—­an’ I think she’s goin’ to be married the day arter to-morrow.’

‘Married to whom?’

‘Well, I can’t say as I rightly knows,’ said Rhona.

‘Do you know whether Mr. Cyril is in Wales?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Rhona, ’him and the funny un are not far from Capel Curig.  Now I come to think on’t, it’s mose likely Mr. Cyril as she’s a-goin’ to marry, for I know it ain’t no Romany chal.  It can’t be the funny un,’ added she, laughing.

‘But where’s the wedding to take place?’

‘I can’t say as I knows ezackly,’ said Rhona; ’but I thinks it’s by Knockers’ Llyn if it ain’t on the top o’ Snowdon.’

‘Good heavens, girl!’ I said.  ’What on earth makes you think that?  That pretty little head of yours is stuffed with the wildest nonsense.  I ran make nothing out of you, so good-night.  Tell her I’ll be there.’

And I was leaving her to walk down the lane when I turned back and said, ‘How long has Sinfi been at the camp?’

‘On’y jist come.  She’s bin away from us for a long while,’ said Rhona.

And then she looked as if she was tempted to reveal some secret that she was bound not to tell.

‘Sinfi’s been very bad,’ she went on, ’but she’s better now.  Her daddy says she’s under a cuss.  She’s been a-wastin’ away like, but she’s better now.’

‘So it’s Sinfi who is under a curse now,’ I said to myself.  ’I suppose Superstition has at last turned her brain.  This perhaps explains Rhona’s mad story.’

‘Does anybody but you think she’s going to be married?’ I asked her.  ‘Does her father think so?’

‘Her daddy says it ain’t Sinfi as is goin’ to be married; but I think it’s Sinfi!  An’ you’ll know all about it the day arter to-morrow.’  And she tripped away in the direction of the camp.

Lost in a whirl of thoughts and speculations, I turned into Fairy Glen.  And now, below me, lay the rocky dell so dearly beloved by Winnie; and there I walked in such a magic web of light and shade as can only be seen in that glen when the moon hangs over it in a certain position.

I descended the steps to the stream and sat down for a time on one of the great boulders and asked myself if this was the very boulder on which Winnie used to sit when she conjured up her childish visions of fairyland.  And by that sweet thought the beauty of the scene became intensified.  There, while the unbroken torrent of the Conway—­glittering along the narrow gorge of the glen between silvered walls of rock as upright as the turreted bastions of a castle—­seemed to flash a kind of phosphorescent light of its own upon the flowers and plants and sparsely scattered trees along the sides, I sat and passed into Winifred’s own dream, and the Tylwyth Teg, which to Winnie represented Oberon and Titania and the whole group of fairies, swept before me.