lambs
In the moss and the rushes,
Where one's song goes sounding up!
And the rocks re-echo it higher and higher
In the height where the eagles live.

In this manner about six weeks slid away, and Winnie's visit to her
father came to an end. I ask, how can people laugh at the sorrows of
childhood? The bitterness of my misery as I sat with that child on
the eve of her departure for Wales (which to me seemed at the extreme
end of the earth) was almost on a par with anything I have since
suffered, and that is indeed saying a great deal. It was in Wynne's
cottage, and I sat on the floor with her wet cheeks close to mine,
saying, 'She leaves me alone.' Tom tried to console me by telling me
that Winifred would soon come back.

'But when?' I said.

'Next year,' said Tom.

He might as well have said next century, for any consolation it gave
me. The idea of a year without her was altogether beyond my grasp. It
seemed infinite.

Week after week passed, and month after month, and little Winifred
was always in my thoughts. Wynne's cottage was a sacred spot to me,
and the organist the most interesting man in the world. I never tired
of asking him questions about her, though he, as I soon found, knew
scarcely anything concerning her and what she was doing, and cared
less; for love of drink had got thoroughly hold of him.

Letters were scarce visitants to him, and I believe he never used to
hear from Wales at all.

V

At the end of the year she came again, and I had about a year of
happiness. I was with her every day, and every day she grew more
necessary to my existence.

It was at this time that I made the acquaintance of Winnie's friend
Rhona Boswell, a charming little Gypsy girl. Graylingham Wood and
Rington Wood, like the entire neighbourhood, were favourite haunts of
a superior kind of Gypsies called Griengroes, that is to say,
horse-dealers. Their business was to buy ponies in Wales and sell
them in the Eastern Counties and the East Midlands. Thus it was that
Winnie had known many of the East Midland Gypsies in Wales. Compared
with Rhona Boswell, who was more like a fairy than a child, Winnie
seemed quite a grave little person. Rhona's limbs were always on the
move, and the movement sprang always from her emotions. Her laugh
seemed to ring through the woods like silver bells, a sound that it
was impossible to mistake for any other. The laughter of m