ny Sap!' cried Sinfi, and she--the fearless woman before
whom the stoutest Gypsy men had quailed--sobbed wildly in terror. She
soon recovered herself, and said: 'What a fool you must think me,
Hal! It wur all through talkin' about the Romany Sap. At fust I
thought it wur the Romany Sap itself, an' it wur only a poor little
effet arter all. There ain't a-many things made o' flesh and blood as
can make Sinfi Lovell show the white feather; but I know you'll think
the wuss o' me arter this, Hal. But while the pictur were a-showin' I
heard my dear mammy's whisper: "Little Sinfi, little Sinfi, beware o'
Gorgios! This is the one."'

V

By the time we reached the encampment it was quite dark. Panuel, and
indeed most of the Gypsies, had turned into the tents for the night;
but both Videy Lovell and Rhona Boswell were moving about as briskly
as though the time was early morning, one with guile expressed in
every feature, the other shedding that aura of frankness and sweet
winsomeness which enslaved Percy Aylwin, and no wonder.

Rhona was in a specially playful mood, and came dancing round us more
like a child of six than a young woman with a Romany Rye for a lover.

But neither Sinfi nor I was in the mood for frolic. My living-waggon,
which still went about wherever the Lovells went, had been carefully
prepared for me by Rhona, and I at once went into it, not with the
idea of getting much sleep, but in order to be alone with my
thoughts. What was I to think of my experiences of that evening? Was
I really to take the spectacle that had seemed to fall upon my eyes
when listening to Sinfi's crwth, or rather when listening to her
song, as evidence that Winifred was alive? Oh, if I could, if I
could! Was I really to accept as true this fantastic superstition
about the crwth and the spirits of Snowdon and the 'living mullo'?
That was too monstrous a thought even for me to entertain.
Notwithstanding all that had passed in the long and dire struggle
between my reason and the mysticism inherited with the blood of two
lines of superstitious ancestors, which circumstances had conspired
to foster, my reason had only been baffled and thwarted; it had not
really been slain.

What, then, could be the explanation of the spectacle that had seemed
to fall upon my eyes? 'It is hallucination,' I said, 'and it is the
result of two very powerful causes--my own strong imagination,
excited to a state of feverish exaltation by the long strain of