ull down the old church, a custodian had to be found who for a
pittance would take charge of it and of the important monuments it
contains. Such a custodian was found in Wynne, who lived in the
cottage already described on the Wilderness Road. Along this road
(which passed both the new church and the old) I was frequently
journeying, and Wynne's tall burly form and ruddy face were, even
before I knew Winnie, a certain comfort to me.

He was said to be the last remnant of an old family that once owned
much land in the neighbourhood, and he was still the recipient of a
small pension. My father used to say that Wynne's family was even
exceptionally good, that it laid claim to being descended from a
still older Welsh family. But my mother scorned the idea, and always
treated the organist as belonging to the lower classes. It was Wynne
who had taught me swimming. It was really he, and not my groom, who
had taught me how to ride a horse along the low-tide sands so as not
to distress him or damage his feet.

It was about this time that my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley, my mother's
brother, who had quarrelled with her, became reconciled to her, and
came to Raxton. He at once recommended that a friend of his, a famous
London surgeon, should he consulted about my lameness. I accordingly
went with him to London to be placed under the treatment of the
eminent man. Had this been done earlier, what a world of suffering
might have been spared me! The man of science pronounced my ailment
to be quite curable.

He performed an operation upon the leg, and after a long and careful
course of treatment in town, advised that I should go to Margate for
a long stay, and avail myself of that change of air. I went,
accompanied by my mother and brother, and stayed there several
months. My father used to come to see us once a month or so, stay for
a week, and then go back.

I now wrote another letter to Winifred, and after a long delay, got a
reply, but it consisted mainly of descriptions of the way in which
she paddled in the Welsh brooks and of lessons in the shawl-dance
which she was taking from Shuri Lovell, the mother of her Gypsy
friend. So vividly did she describe these lessons that her pictures
haunted me. I wrote in reply to this a letter burning with my
ever-growing love, but to this I got no reply.

As the surgeon had prophesied, I made such advance that I was after a
while able to walk with tolerable ease without my crutches, by the
a