I had passed,
not far from the lake. Mrs. Davies (he told me) had lived there with
her niece till the aunt died.

'Then you knew Winifred Wynne?' I said. There was to me a romantic
kind of interest about a man who had seen Winifred in Wales.

'Knew her well,' said he. 'She was a Carnarvon gal--tremenjus fond o'
the sea--and a rare pretty gal she was.'

'Pretty gal she _is_, you might ha' said, Mr. Blyth,' a woman's voice
exclaimed from the settle beneath the window. 'She's about in these
parts at this very moment, though Jim Burton there says it's her
ghose. But do ghoses eat and drink? that's what _I_ want to know.
Besides, if anybody's like to know the difference between Winnie
Wynne and Winnie Wynne's ghose, I should say it's most likely me.'

I turned round. A Gypsy girl, dressed in fine Gypsy costume, very
dark but very handsome, was sitting on a settle drinking from a pot
of ale, and nursing an instrument of the violin kind, which she was
fondling as though it were a baby. She was quite young, not above
eighteen years of age, slender, graceful--remarkably so, even for a
Gypsy girl. Her hair, which was not so much coal-black as blue-black,
was plaited in the old-fashioned Gypsy way, in little plaits that
looked almost as close as plaited straw, and as it was of an
unusually soft and fine texture for a Gypsy, the plaits gave it a
lustre quite unlike that which unguents can give. As she sat there,
one leg thrown over the over, displaying a foot which, even in the
heavy nailed boots, would have put to shame the finest foot of the
finest English lady I have ever seen, I could discern that she was
powerful and tall; her bosom, gently rising and falling beneath the
layers of scarlet and yellow and blue handkerchiefs, which filled up
the space the loose-fitting gown of bright merino left open, was of a
breadth fully worthy of her height. A silk handkerchief of deep
blood-red colour was bound round her head, not in the modern Gypsy
fashion, but more like an Oriental turban. From each ear was
suspended a massive ring of red gold. Round her beautiful, towering,
tanned neck was a thrice-twisted necklace of half-sovereigns and
amber and red coral. She looked me full in the face. Then came a
something in the girl's eyes the like of which I had seen in no
other Gypsy's eyes, though I had known well the Gypsies who used
to camp near Rington Manor, not far from Raxton, for my kinsman
Percy Aylwin, the poet, had lately fallen