d in the clouds is as strong. Why, I tell you there's
nothin' a trushul can't do, whether it's curin' a man as is bit by a
sap, or wipin' the very rainbow out o' the sky by jist layin' two
sticks crossways, or even curin' the cramp in your legs by jist
settin' your shoes crossways; there's nothin' for good or bad a
trushul _can't_ do if it likes. Hav'n't you never heer'd o' the
dukkeripen o' the trushul shinin' in the sunset sky when the light
o' the sinkin' sun shoots up behind a bar o' clouds an' makes a kind
o fiery cross? But to go and steal a trushul out of a dead man's
tomb--why, it's no wonder as the Wynnes is cussed, feyther and
child.'

I could not have tolerated this prattle about Gypsy superstitions had
I not observed that through it all the Gypsy was on the _qui vive_,
looking for the traces of her path that Winifred had unconsciously
left behind her. Had the Gypsy been following the trail with the
silence of an American Indian, she could not have worked more
carefully than she was now working while her tongue went rattling on.
I afterwards found this to be a characteristic of her race, as I
afterwards found that what is called the long sight of the Gypsies
(as displayed in the following of the _patrin_ [Footnote: Trail]) is
not long sight at all, but is the result of a peculiar faculty the
Gypsies have of observing more closely than Gorgios do everything
that meets their eyes in the woods and on the hills and along the
roads. When we reached the spot indicated by the Gypsy as being
Winifred's haunt, the ledge where she was in the habit of coming for
her imaginary interviews with the 'Prince of the Mist,' we did not
stay there, but for a time still followed the path, which from this
point became rougher and rougher, alongside deep precipices and
chasms. Every now and then she would stop on a ledge of rock, and,
without staying her prattle for a moment, stoop down and examine the
earth with eyes that would not have missed the footprint of a rat.
When I saw her pause, as she sometimes would in the midst of her
scrutiny, to gaze inquiringly down some gulf, which then seemed awful
to my inexperienced eyes, but which later on in the day, when I came
to see the tremendous chasms of that side of Snowdon, seemed
insignificant enough, the circulation of my blood would seem to stop,
and then rush again through my body more violently than before. And
while the 'patrin-chase' went on, and the morning grew brighter and