’Ah!  Then the man sitting on the boulder at the bottom was you!  How wonderful!  Sinfi was there on the step round the corner; she must have seen you.  I know now why she suddenly hurried me away.  She had told me that she wanted to see the Glen by moonlight’

‘Then you did not know that you would meet me here?’

’My dear Henry, do you suppose that if I had known, I could have been induced to take part in anything so theatrical?  When I saw you standing here my amazement and joy were so great that I forgot the strange way in which I stood exhibited.’

I felt that the longer she chatted about such matters as these the more opportunities I should get of learning how much and how little she knew of her own story, so I said,

‘But tell me how Sinfi contrived to trick you.’

’Well, this morning was the time fixed for our visiting Llyn Coblynau, as we call Knockers’ Lynn, which was my favourite place as a child.  We were to see it when the colours of the morning were upon it.  Then we were to go right to the top of Snowdon and take a mid-day meal at the hut there, and in the evening go down to Llanberis and sleep there.  To-morrow morning we were to go to dear old Carnarvon and see again the beloved sea.  I find now that her plan was to bring you and me together in this sensational way.’

‘Will she join us?’ I asked.

’I know no more than you what will be Sinfi’s next whim.  At the last moment yesterday I was surprised to find that I was not to come with her here, as she was not to sleep in the camp last night because she had promised to see a friend at Capel Curig.  And now, shall I tell you how she inveigled me into taking my part in this Snowdon play she was getting up?  She told me that she had the greatest wish to discover how the “Knockers’ echoes,” as they are called, would sound if, in the early morning, she were to play her crwth in one spot and I were to answer it from another spot with a verse of a Welsh song.  It seemed a pretty idea, and it was agreed that when I reached the llyn I was to go round it to the opening at the east, pass through the crevice, and wait there till I heard her crwth.’

’Well, Winnie, I must say that the way in which our Gypsy friend manipulated you, and the way in which she manipulated me, shows a method that would have done credit to any madness.’

‘You?  How did she trick you?’

I was determined not to talk about myself till I had felt my way.

‘Winnie, dear,’ I said, ’seeing you is such a surprise, and my illness has left me so weak, that I must wait before talking about myself.  I shall be more able to do this after I have learnt more of what has befallen you.  You say that Sinfi proposed to bring you to Wales; but where were you when she did so?  And what brought you into contact with Sinfi again after—­after—­after you and I were parted in Raxton?’

‘Ah! that is a strange story indeed,’ said Winifred.  ’It bewilders me to recall it as much as it will bewilder you when you come to hear it.  I, too, seem to have been ill, and quite unconscious for months and months.’