ed simply. 'She says she would lay down her life for me, and I
really believe she would. Well, there is not far from where I used to
live a famous cascade called the Swallow Falls, where the water drops
down a chasm of great depth. If you listen to the noise of the
cataract, you may hear mingled with it a peculiar kind of wail as
from a man in great agony. It is said to be the wail of a Sir John
Wynn, of Gwydir, whose spirit is under a curse, and is imprisoned at
the bottom of the falls on account of his cruelty and misdeeds on
earth. On those rare nights when the full moon shines down the
chasm, the wail becomes an agonised shriek. Once on a bright
moonlight night Sinfi and I went to see these falls. The moonlight on
the cascade had exactly the same supernatural appearance that it has
now falling upon these billows. Sinfi sings some of our Welsh songs,
and accompanies herself on a peculiar obsolete Welsh instrument
called a crwth, which she always carries with her. While we were
listening to the cataract and what she called the Wynn wail, she
began to sing the wild old air. Then at once the wail sprang into a
loud shriek; Sinfi said the shriek of a cursed spirit; and the
shriek was exactly like the sound I heard from the cliffs a little
while ago.'

'I heard the same noise, Winnie. It was simply the rending and
cracking of the poor churchyard trees as they fell.'

She turned back with me to the water-mark to see the waves come
tumbling in beneath the moon. We sauntered along the sea-margin
again, heedless of the passage of time.

And again (as on that betrothal night) Winifred prattled on,
while I listened to the prattle, craftily throwing in a word or two,
now and then, to direct the course of the sweet music into such
channels as best pleased my lordly whim,--when suddenly, against my
will and reason, there came into my mind that idea of the sea's
prophecy which was so familiar to my childhood, but which my studies
had now made me despise.

The sea then threw up to Winifred's feet a piece of seaweed. It was a
long band of common weed, that would in the sunlight have shone a
bright red. And at that very moment--right across the sparkling bar
the moon had laid over the sea--there passed, without any cloud to
cast it, a shadow. And my father's description of his love-tragedy
haunted me, I knew not why. And right across my life, dividing it in
twain like a burn-scar, came and lay for ever that strip of red