I refused to return to Raxton, and took Mrs. Davies's
cottage, which was unoccupied, and lived there throughout the autumn.
Every day, wet or dry, I used to sally out on the Snowdonian range,
just as though she had been lost but yesterday, making inquiries,
bribing the good-natured Welsh people (who needed no bribing) to aid
me in a search which to them must have seemed monomaniacal.
The peasants and farmers all knew me. 'Sut mae dy galon? (How is thy
heart?)' they would say in the beautiful Welsh phrase as I met them.
'How is my heart, indeed!' I would sigh as I went on my way.
Before I went to Wales in search of Winifred I had never set foot in
the Principality. Before I left it there was scarcely a Welshman who
knew more familiarly than I every mile of the Snowdonian country.
Never a trace of Winifred could I find.
At the end of the autumn I left the cottage and removed to Pen y
Gwryd, as a comparatively easy point from which I could reach the
mountain llyn where I had breakfasted with Winifred on that morning.
Afterwards I took up my abode at a fishing-inn, and here I stayed the
winter through--scarcely hoping to find her now, yet chained to
Snowdon.
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