‘That’s what we’re a-goin’ to do, brother.  What I sez to myself when I made up my mind to take the cuss on me wur this:  “I’ll make her dukkeripen come true; I’ll take her to him in Wales, and then we’ll part.  We’ll part on Snowdon, an’ I’ll go one way an’ they’ll go another, jist like them two streams as start from Gorphwysfa an’ go runnin’ down till one on ’em takes the sea at Carnarvon, and t’other at Tremadoc.”  Yis, brother, it’s on Snowdon where you an’ Winnie Wynne sees the last o’ Sinfi Lovell.’

Distressed as I was at her words, that inflexible look on her face I understood only too well.  ‘But there is Mr. D’Arcy to consider,’ I said.  ’Winnie tells me that it is the particular wish of Mr. D’Arcy that you and she should return to him at Hurstcote Manor.  He has been wonderfully kind, and his wishes should be complied with.’

‘No, brother,’ said Sinfi, ’I shall never go to Hurstcote Manor no more.’

’Surely you will, Sinfi.  Winnie tells me of the deep regard that Mr. D’Arcy has for you.’

’Never no more.  Winifred’s dukkeripen on Snowdon has come true, and it wur me what made it come true.  Yis, it wur Sinfi Lovell and nobody else what made that dukkeripen come true.’

And again her face was illuminated by the triumphant expression which it wore when she returned to Knockers’ Llyn with Winnie.

’It was indeed your noble self-sacrifice for Winnie and me that made the dukkeripen of the Golden Hand come true.’

‘It worn’t all for you and Winnie, Hal.  I ain’t a-goin’ to let you think better on me than I desarve.  It wur partly for you, and it wur partly for my dear mammy, and it wur partly for myself.  Listen to me, Hal Aylwin. When I made Winnie’s dukkeripen come true I made my own dukkeripen come to naught at the same time.  The only way to make a dukkeripen come to naught is to make another dukkeripen what conterdicks it come true.  That’s the only way to master a dukkeripen.  It ain’t often that Romanies or Gorgios or anything that lives can master his own dukkeripen.  I’ve been thinkin’ a good deal about sich things since I took that cuss on me.  Night arter night have I laid awake thinkin’ about these ’ere things, and, brother, I believe I have done what no livin’ creatur ever done before—­I’ve mastered my own dukkeripen.  My mammy used to say that the dukkeripen of every livin’ thing comes true at last.  “Is there anythink in the whole world,” she would say, “more crafty nor one o’ those old broad-finned trouts in Knockers’ Llyn?  But that trout’s got his dukkeripen, an’ it comes true at last.  All day long he’s p’raps bin a-flashin’ his fins an’ a-twiddlin’ his tail round an’ round the may-fly or the brandlin’ worrum, though he knows all about the hook; but all at wonst comes the time o’ the bitin’, and that’s the time o’ the dukkeripen, when every fish in the brook, whether he’s hungry or not, begins to bite, an’ then up comes old red-spots, an’ grabs at the bait because he must grab, an’ swallows it because he must swallow it; an’ there’s a hend of old red-spots jist as sure as if he didn’t know there wur a hook in the bait.”  That’s what my mammy used to say.  But there wur one as could, and did, master her own dukkeripen—­Shuri Lovell’s little Sinfi.’