He then told me, with many hiccups, that, since her mother's death (that is to say from her very infancy), Winifred had been brought up by an aunt in Wales. 'Quite a lady, her aunt is,' said Tom proudly, 'and Winifred has come to spend a few weeks with her father.' He said this in a grandly paternal tone--a tone that seemed meant to impress upon her how very much obliged she ought to feel to him for consenting to be her father; and, judging from the look the child gave him, she did feel very much obliged. Suddenly, however, a thought seemed to come back upon Tom, a thought which my unexpected appearance on the scene had driven from his drunken brain. The look of virtuous indignation returned, and staring at the little girl through glazed eyes, he said with the tremulous and tearful voice of a deeply injured parent, 'Winifred, I thought I heard you singing one of them heathen Gypsy songs that you learnt of the Gypsies in Wales.' 'No, father,' said she, 'it was the song they sing in Shire-Carnarvon about the golden cloud over Snowdon and the spirits of the air.' 'Yes,' said Tom, 'but a little time ago you were singing a Gypsy song--a downright heathen Gypsy song. I heard it about half an hour ago when I was in the church.' The beautiful little head drooped in shame. 'I'm s'prised at you, Winifred. When I come to think whose daughter you are.--mine!--I'm s'prised at you,' continued Torn, whose virtuous indignation waxed with every word. 'Oh. I'm so sorry!' said the child. 'I won't do it any more.' This contrition of the child's only fanned the flame of Tom's virtuous indignation. 'Here am I,' said he, 'the most (hiccup) respectable man in two parishes,--except Master Aylwin's father, of course,--here am I, the organ-player for the Christianest of all the Christian churches along the coast, and here's my daughter sings heathen songs just like a Gypsy or a tinker. I'm s'prised at you, Winifred.' I had often seen Tom in a dignified state of liquor, but the pathetic expression of injured virtue that again overspread his face so changed it, that I had some difficulty myself in realising how entirely the tears filling his eyes and the grief at his heart were of alcoholic origin. And as to the little girl, she began to sob piteously. 'Oh dear, oh dear, what a wicked girl I am !' said she. This exclamation, however, aroused my ire against Tom; and as I always looked upon him as my special paid henchman, who, in return for such services as supplying me with tiny boxing-gloves, and fishing-tackle, and bait, during my hale days, and tame rabbits now that I was a cripple, mostly contrived to possess himself of my pocket-money, I had no hesitation in exclaiming, 'Why, Tom, you know you're drunk, you silly old fool!' At this Tom turned his mournful and reproachful gaze upon me, and began to weep anew. Then he turned and addressed the sea, uplifting his hand in oratorical fashion:--