an only know Winifred through
these poor words. That is the distressing side of a task like mine.
The beloved woman here called Winifred (no phantom of an idle
imagination, but more real to me and dear to me than this soul and
body I call my own)--this Winifred can only live for you, reader,
through my feeble, faltering words; and yet I ask you to listen to
the story of such a love as mine.

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have often as a child sung songs of Snowdon to
me and told me of others you used to sing. I should love to hear one
of these now, with the chime of the North Sea for an accompaniment
instead of the instrument you tell me your Gypsy friend used to play.
Before we go up the gangway, do sing me a verse of one of those
songs.'

After some little persuasion she yielded and sang in a soft undertone
the following verse:--

'I met in a glade a lone little maid,
At the foot of y Wyddfa the white;
Oh, lissom her feet as the mountain hind,
And darker her hair than the night;
Her cheek was like the mountain rose,
But fairer far to see,
As driving along her sheep with a song,
Down from the hills came she.'

[Welsh translation]

'Mi gwrddais gynt a morwynig,
Wrth odreu y Wyddfa wen,
Un ysgafn ei throed fel yr ewig
A gwallt fel y nos ar ei phen;
Ei grudd oedd fel y rhosyn,
Un hardd a gwen ei gwawr;
Yn canu can, a'i defaid man,
O'r Wyddfa'n d'od i lawr.'

'What a beautiful world it is!' said she, in a half-whisper, as we
were about to part at the cottage door, for I had refused to leave
her on the sands or even at the garden-gate. 'I should like to live
for ever,' she whispered; 'shouldn't you, Henry?'

'Well, that all depends upon the person I lived with. For instance, I
shouldn't care to live for ever with Widow Shales, the pale-faced
tailoress, nor yet with her humpbacked son, whose hump was such a
constant source of wistful wonder and solicitude to you as a child.'

She gave a merry little laugh of reminiscence. Then she said, 'But you
could live with _me_ for ever, couldn't you, Henry?' plucking a leaf
from the grape-vine on the wall and putting it between her teeth.

'For ever and ever, Winifred.'

'It fills me with wonder,' said she, after a while, 'the thought of
b