It was
perfectly inconceivable to me that the writers of some of these
letters were not themselves demented, so wild or so fanciful were the
clues they suggested. Yet. when I came to meet them and talk with
them (as I sometimes did), I found these correspondents to be of the
ordinary prosaic British type. All my efforts were to no purpose.
Among my longer journeys from the fishing-inn, the most frequent were
those to Holywell, near Flint, to the Well of St. Winifred--the
reader need not be told why. He will recollect how little Winnie,
while plying me with strawberries, had sagely recommended the holy
water of this famous well as a 'cure for crutches.' She had actually
brought me some of it in a lemonade bottle when she returned to
Raxton after her first absence, and had insisted on rubbing my ankle
with it. She had, as I afterwards learnt from her father, importuned
and at last induced her aunt (evidently a good-natured and worthy
soul) to take her to visit a friend at Holywell, a journey of many
miles, for the purpose of bringing home with her a bottle of the holy
water.
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