ome to the bereaved heart. You are talking to a man who _knows_!'

'I will commit no such outrage upon reason as to place a priceless
jewel in a place where I know it will be stolen.'

'You _will_ replace the cross in that tomb.'

As he spoke he shook my hands warmly, and said, '_Au revoir_.
Remember, I shall always be delighted to see you.'

It was not till I saw him disappear amongst the crowd that I could
give way to the laughter which I had so much difficulty in
suppressing. What a relief it was to be able to do this!

VI

THE SONG OF Y WYDDFA

I

After this I had one or two interviews with our solicitor in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, upon important family matters connected with my
late uncle's property.

I had been one night to the theatre with my mother and my aunt. The
house had been unusually crowded. When the performance was over, we
found that the streets were deluged with rain. Our carriage had been
called some time before it drew up, and we were standing under the
portico amid a crowd of impatient ladies when a sound fell or seemed
to fall on my ears which stopped for the moment the very movements of
life. Amid the rattle of wheels and horses' feet and cries of
messengers about carriages and cabs, I seemed to distinguish a female
voice singing:

'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!'

It was the voice of Winifred singing as in a dream.

I heard my aunt say,

'Do look at that poor girl singing and holding out her little
baskets! She must be crazed to be offering baskets for sale in this
rain and at this time of night.'

I turned my eyes in the direction in which my aunt was looking, but
the crowd before me prevented my seeing the singer.

'She is gone, vanished,' said my aunt sharply, for my eagerness to
see made me rude.

'What was she like?' I asked.

'She was a young slender girl, holding out a bunch of small fancy
baskets of woven colours, through which the rain was dripping. She
was dressed in rags, and through the rags shone, here and there,
patches of her shoulders; and she wore a dingy red handkerchief round
her head. She stood in the wet and mud, beneath the lamp, quite
unconscious apparently of the bustle and confusion around her.'

Almost at the same moment our carriage drew up. I lingered on the
step as long as possib