‘But what did you do, Sinfi?’

‘What did I do?  Well, don’t you mind me comin’ here one night and buyin’ a couple of blankets off you, and some bread and meat and things?’

‘In course I do, Sinfi, and you said you wanted them for the vans.’

The Gypsy smiled and said, ’I knowed she was bound to come back, so I pulls up the window and in I gets, and then opens the door and off I comes to you, as bein’ the nearest neighbour, for the blankets and things, and I puts ’em in the house, and I leaves the door uncatched, and I hides myself behind the house, and, sure enough, back she comes, poor thing!  I hears her kick, kick, kickin’ at the door, and then I hears her go in when she finds it give way.  So I waits a good while, till I thinks she’s eat some o’ the vittles and gone to sleep maybe, and then round the house I creeps, and in the door I peeps, and soon I hears her breathin’ soft, and then I shuts the door and goes away to the place.’ [Footnote]

[Footnote:  Camping-place.]

‘But why didn’t you tell us all this, Sinfi?’ asked the landlord.  ‘My wife would ha’ went and seen arter her, and we wouldn’t ha’ touched a farthin’ for they blankets and things, not we, Sinfi, not we.’

‘Ah, you would, though,’ said the girl, ‘’cause I’d ha’ made you take it.  Winnie Wynne was the only one on ’em, Gorgio or Gorgie, ever I liked, and nobody’s got no right to see arter her only me, and that’s why I’m about here now, if you must know; but nobody’s got no right to see arter her only me, and nobody sha’n’t nuther.  They might go and skear her to run up the hills, and she might dash herself all to flactions in no time.’

‘Don’t take on so, Sinfi,’ said the landlord.  ’When they are in that way they allus turns agin them as they was fond on.’

‘Then you noticed as she was fond o’ me, Mr. Blyth,’ said the girl with great earnestness.

‘Of course she was fond on you, Sinfi; everybody knows that.’

‘Yes,’ said the girl, now much affected, ’every body knowed it, every body knowed as she was fond o’ me.  And to see her look at me like that—­it was a cruel sight, Mr. Blyth, I can tell you.  Such a look you never see’d in all your life, Mr. Blyth.’

‘Then I take it she’s in the house now?’ said the landlord.

‘She goes prowlin’ about all day among the hills, as if she was a-lookin’ for somebody; and she talks to somebody as she calls the Tywysog o’r Niwl, an’ I know that’s Welsh for the “Prince o’ the Mist”; but back she comes at night.  She talks to herself a good deal; and she sings to herself the Welsh gillies what Mrs. Davies larnt her in a v’ice as seems as if she wur a-singin’ in her sleep, but it’s very sweet to hear it.  Yesterday I crep’ near her when she was a-sittin’ down lookin’ at herself in that ’ere llyn where the water’s so clear, “Knockers’ Llyn,” as they calls it, where her and me and Rhona Boswell used to go.  And I heard her say she was “cussed by Henry’s feyther.”  And then I heard her talk to somebody agin, as she called the Prince of the Mist; but it’s herself as she’s a-talkin’ to all the while.’