l and a girl called Sinfi, had visited this
same Fairy Glen, when they saw the Fairy Queen alone on a ledge of
rock, dressed in a green kirtle with a wreath of golden leaves about
her head.

Another subject upon which I loved to hear her talk was that of the
'Knockers' of Snowdon, the guardians of undiscovered copper mines,
who sometimes by knocking on the rocks gave notice to individuals
they favoured of undiscovered copper, but these favoured ones were
mostly children who chanced to wander up Snowdon by themselves. She
had, she said, not only heard but seen these Knockers. They were
thick-set dwarfs, as broad as they were long. One Knocker, an elderly
female, had often played with her on the hills. Knockers' Llyn,
indeed, was very much on Winifred's mind. When a golden cloud, like
the one on which she was singing her song at the time I first saw
her, shone over a person's head at Knockers' Llyn, it was a sign of
good fortune. She was sure that it was so, because the Welsh people
believed it, and so did the Gypsies.

Not a field or a hedgerow was unfamiliar to us. We were most learned
in the structure of birds' nests, in the various colours of birds'
eggs, and in insect architecture. In all the habits or the wild
animals of the meadows we were most profound little naturalists.

Winifred could in the morning, after the dews were gone, tell by the
look of a buttercup or a daisy what kind of weather was at hand, when
the most cunning peasant was deceived by the hieroglyphics of the
sky, and the most knowing seaman could 'make nothing of the wind.'

Her life, in fact, had been spent in the open air.

There were people staying at the Hall, and they and Frank engrossed
all my mother's attention. At least, she did not appear to notice my
absence from home.

My brother Frank, however, was not so unobservant (he was two years
older than myself). Early one morning, before breakfast, curiosity
led him to follow me, and he came upon us in Graylingham Wood as we
were sitting under a tree close to the cliff, eating the wild honey
we had found in the Wilderness.

He stood there swinging a ground-ash cane, and looking at her in a
lordly, patronising way, the very personification no doubt of boyish
beauty. I became troubled to see him look so handsome. The contrast
between him and a cripple was not fair, I thought, as I observed an
expression of passing admiration on little Winifred's face. Yet I
thought there was not the plea