margin of waves whose murmurs were soft and perfumed as Winifred's
own breathing's when she slept; and remember that the girl was
Winifred herself, and that the boy--the happy boy--had Winifred's
love. Ah! but that last element of that hour's bliss is just what
the reader cannot realise, because he can only know Winifred through
these poor words. That is the distressing side of a task like mine.
The beloved woman here called Winifred (no phantom of an idle
imagination, but more real to me and dear to me than this soul and
body I call my own)--this Winifred can only live for you, reader,
through my feeble, faltering words; and yet I ask you to listen to
the story of such a love as mine.

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have often as a child sung songs of Snowdon to
me and told me of others you used to sing. I should love to hear one
of these now, with the chime of the North Sea for an accompaniment
instead of the instrument you tell me your Gypsy friend used to play.
Before we go up the gangway, do sing me a verse of one of those
songs.'

After some little persuasion she yielded and sang in a soft undertone
the following verse:--

'I met in a glade a lone little maid,
At the foot of y Wyddfa the white;
Oh, lissom her feet as the mountain hind,
And darker her hair than the night;
Her cheek was like the mountain rose,
But fairer far to see,
As driving along her sheep with a song,
Down from the hills came she.'