iance more
ghastly than darkness, concentrating all its light on the chancel,
beneath which I knew that my father was lying in the dark crypt with
a cross on his breast. I turned for relief to look in the room, and
there, in the darkness made by the shadow of the bed, I seemed to
read, written in pale, trembling flame, the words:

'LET THERE BE NO MAN TO PITY HIM, NOR TO HAVE COMPASSION UPON HIS
FATHERLESS CHILDREN....LET HIS CHILDREN BE VAGABONDS, AND BEG THEIR
BREAD: LET THEM SEEK IT ALSO OUT OF DESOLATE PLACES.'

I returned to the window for relief from the bedroom.

'Now, let me calmly consider the case in all its bearings, I said to
myself, drawing a chair to the window and sitting down with my elbows
resting on the sill. 'Suppose Wynne really did overhear the
altercation between my mother and my uncle, which seems scarcely
probable, has drink really so demoralised him, so brutalised him,
that for drink he would commit the crime of sacrilege? There are no
signs of his having sunk so low as that. But suppose the crime were
committed, what then? Do I really believe that the curse of my father
and of the Psalmist would fall upon Winifred's pure and innocent
head? Certainly not. I do not believe in the effect of curses at all.
I do not belief in any supernatural interference with the natural
laws of the universe.'

Ah! but this thought about the futility of the curse, about the folly
of my father's superstitions, brought me no comfort. I knew that,
brave as Winifred was as a child, she was, when confronting the
material world, very superstitious. I remembered that as a child,
whenever I said, 'What a happy day it has been!' she would not rest
until she had made me add, 'and shall have many more,' because of her
feeling of the prophetic power of words. I knew that the
superstitions of the Welsh hills awed her. I knew that it had been
her lot to imbibe, not only Celtic, but Romany superstitions. I knew
that the tribe of Gypsies with whom she had been thrown into contact,
the Lovells and the Boswells, though superior to the rest, of the
Romany race, are the most superstitious of all, and that Winifred had
become an object of strong affection to the most superstitious even
among that tribe, one Sinfi Lovell. I knew from something that had
once fallen from her as a child on the sands, when prattling about
Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, that especially powerful with her was
the idea (both Romany and Celtic) abo