This very charming and poetical story, although written many years ago, only appeared in 1898, when it immediately became a classic of the language. The dreamy hero, the gipsy heroine, Sinfi, and the delicately drawn Winifred, the deep Romany lore, the haunting speculations on love and death, make the book unforgetable.

There are two scenes, both of love, which sum up the beauty of the story. Here is the betrothal of Henry, then a cripple, with Winifred. Both are children, and the child-spirit is unerringly reflected in their talk:

"Don't you wish," said the little girl meditatively, "that men and women had voices more like the birds?"

The idea had never occurred to me before, but I understood in a moment what she meant, and sympathised with her. Nature, of course, has been unkind to the lords and ladies of creation in this one matter of voice.

The Voices In Eden

"Yes, I do," I said.

"I'm so glad you do," said she. "I've so often thought what a pity it is that God did not let men and women talk and sing as the birds do. I believe He did let 'em talk like that in the Garden of Eden, don't you?"

"I think it very likely," I said.

"Men's voices are so rough mostly, and women's voices are so sharp mostly, that it's sometimes a little hard to love 'em as you love the birds."

"It is," I said.

"Don't you think the poor birds must sometimes feel very much distressed at hearing the voices of men and women, especially when they all talk together?"

The idea seemed so original and yet so true that it made me laugh; we both laughed.

• • • • •

"Do you like my brother, Winifred?" I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Why?"

"Because he is so pretty and so nimble.

I believe he could run up-------" And then she stopped; but I knew what the complete sentence would have been. She was going to say, "I believe he could run up the gangways without stopping to take breath."

Here was a stab, but she did not notice the effect of her unfinished sentence. Then a question came from me involuntarily.

"Winifred," I said, "do you like him as well as you like me?"

"Oh, no," she said, in a tone of wonderment that such a question should be asked.

"But I am not pretty, and-------"

"Oh, but you are!" she said eagerly, interrupting me.

"But," I said, with a choking sensation in my voice, "I am lame." And I looked at the crutches lying among the ferns beside me.

"Ah, but I like you all the better for being lame," she said, nestling up to me.

"But you like nimble boys," I said, "such as Frank."

She looked puzzled. The anomaly of liking nimble boys and crippled boys at the same time seemed to strike her. Yet she felt it was so, though it was difficult to explain it.

"Yes, I do like nimble boys," she said, at last, plucking with her fingers at a blade of grass she held between her teeth. "But I think I like lame boys better, that is if they are - if they are - you."

I gave an exclamation of delight. But she was two years younger than I, and scarcely, I suppose, understood it.

"He is very pretty," she said meditatively, "but he has not got love-eyes like you and Snap, and I don't think I could love any little boy so very, very much now who wasn't lame."

The Lame Lover

She loved me in spite of my lameness; she loved me because I was lame, so that if I had not fallen from the cliffs, if I had sustained my glorious position amongst the boys of Raxton and Graylingham as "Fighting Hal," I might never have won little Winifred's love. Here was a revelation of the mingled yarn of life that I remember struck me even at that childish age.

I began to think I might, in spite of the undoubted crutches, resume my old place as the luckiest boy along the sands. She loved me because I was lame! Those who say that physical infirmity does not feminise the character have not had my experience. No more talk for me that morning. In such a mood as that there can be no talk. I sat in a silent dream, save when a sweet sob of delight would come up like a bubble from the heaving waters of my soul. I had passed into that rare and high mood when life's afflictions are turned by love to life's deepest, holiest joys. I had begun early to learn and know the gamut of the affections.

"When you leave me here and go home to Wales you will never forget me, Winnie?"

"Never, never!" she said, as she helped me from the ferns, which were still wet with dew as though it had been raining. "I will think of you every night before I go to sleep, and always end my prayers as I did that first night after I saw you so lonely in the churchyard."

"And how is that, Winnie?" I said, as she adjusted my crutches for me.

"After I've said 'amen,' I always say, 'and, dear Lord Jesus, don't forget to love dear Henry, who can't get up the gangways without me,' and I will say that every night as long as I live."

Years later they meet almost in the same spot, but with rank and wealth and the opposition of their elders standing between them.

Henry Proposes

"Winifred, it is not my doing; it is Fate's doing that we meet here on this night, and that I am driven to say here what I had as a schoolboy sworn should be said whenever we should meet again."

"I think," said Winifred, pulling herself up with the dignity of a queen, that if you have anything important to say to me it had better be at a more seasonable time than at this hour of night, and at a more seasonable place than on these sands."

"No, Winifred," said I, "the time is now, and the place is here - here on this very spot where, once on a time, you said 'cer-tumly' when a little lover asked your hand. It is now and here, Winifred, that I will say what I have to say."

"And what is that, sir?" said Winifred, much perplexed and disturbed.