Part 27 (1/2)

Holywell grew to have a fascination for me, and in the following spring I left the fis.h.i.+ng-inn beneath Snowdon, and took rooms in this interesting old town.

VIII

One day, near the rivulet that runs from St. Winifred's Well, I suddenly encountered Sinfi Lovell.

'Sinfi,' I said, 'she's dead, she's surely dead.'

'I tell ye, brother, she ain't got to die!' said Sinfi, as she came and stood beside me. 'Winnie Wynne's on'y got to beg her bread. She's alive.'

'Where is she?' I cried. 'Oh, Sinfi, I shall go mad!'

'There you're too fast for me, brother,' said she, 'when you ask me _where_ she is; but she's alive, and I ain't come quite emp'y-handed of news about her, brother.'

'Oh, tell me!' said I.

'Well,' said Sinfi, 'I've just met one of our people, Euri Lovell, as says that, the very mornin' after we seed her on the hills, he met her close to Carnarvon at break of day.'

'Then she _did_ go to Carnarvon,' I said. 'What a distance for those dear feet!'

'Euri knowed her by sight,' said Sinfi, 'but didn't know about her bein' under the cuss, so he jist let her pa.s.s, sayin' to hisself, ”She looks jist like a crazy wench this mornin', does Winnie Wynne.”

Euri was a-goin' through Carnarvon to Bangor, on to Conway and Chester, and never heerd a word about her bein' lost till he got back, six weeks ago.'

'I must go to Carnarvon at once,' said I.

'No use, brother,' said Sinfi. 'If _I_ han't pretty well worked Carnarvon, it's a pity. I've bin there the last three weeks on the patrin-chase, and not a patrin could I find. It's my belief as she never went into Carnarvon town at all, but turned off and went into Llanbeblig churchyard.'

'Why do you think so, Sinfi?'

''Cause her aunt, bein' a Carnarvon woman, was buried among her own kin in Llanbeblig churchyard.

Leastwise, you won't find a ghose of a trace on her at Carnarvon, and it'll be a long kind of a wild-goose chase from here; but if you will go, go you must.'

She could not dissuade me from starting for Carnarvon at once; and, as I would go, she seemed to take it as a matter of course that she must accompany me. Our journey was partly by coach and partly afoot.

My first impulse on nearing Carnarvon was to go--I could not have said why--to Llanbeblig churchyard.

Among a group of graves of the Davieses we easily found that of Winifred's aunt, beneath a newly-planted arbutus tree. After looking at the modest mound for some time, and wondering where Winifred had stood when the coffin was lowered--as I had wondered where she had stood at St. Winifred's Well--I roamed about the churchyard with Sinfi in silence for a time.

At last she said, 'I mind comin' here wonst with Winnie, and I mind her sayin': ”There's no place I should so much like to be buried in as Llanbeblig churchyard. The graves of them as die unmarried do look so beautiful.”'

'How did she know the graves of those who die unmarried?'

Sinfi looked over the churchyard and waved her hand.

'Wherever you see them beautiful primroses, and them s.h.i.+nin'

snowdrops, and them sweet-smellin' vi'lets, that's allus the grave of a child or else of a young Gorgie as died a maid; and wherever you see them laurel trees, and box trees, and 'butus trees, that's the grave of a pusson as ain't nuther child nor maid, an' the Welsh folk think n.o.body else on'y child'n an' maids ain't quite good enough to be turned into the blessed flowers o' spring.'

'Next to the sea,' I said, 'she loved the flowers of spring.'

'And _I_ should like to be buried here too, brother,' said Sinfi, as we left the churchyard.