"I heard all about poor Caradoc's affair from Dora; but Winny has refused another offer of marriage--a most eligible one, too--from Sir Watkins Vaughan; and since then he was nearly done for in another fashion: for when he and I were cub-hunting last month near Hawkstone, his horse, a hard-mouthed brute, swerved as we were crossing a fence, and rolled over him; so between her blunt refusal and his ugly spill, he is rather to be pitied. I don't understand Winny at all. I should not like my girls to throw themselves away; but hay should be made while the sun shines, and baronets are not to be found under every bush. Beauty fades; it is but a thing of a season; and the most blooming girl, in time, becomes passé and wrinkled, or it may be fat and fusby, as her grandmother was before her. And then Sir Watkins represents one of the best families in Wales, not so old as _us_ certainly, but still he is descended in a direct line from Gryffyth Vychan, who was Lord of Glyndwyrdwy in Merionethshire, in Stephen's time." (Why should Winifred Lloyd refuse and refuse again thus? As certain little passages between us in days gone by came flashing back to my memory, I felt my cheek flush by that wretched camp-fire, and then I thrust the thoughts aside as vanity.) "Poor Winny has not been very well of late," the letter proceeded. "When she and Dora were decorating their poor mamma's grave, in the old Welsh fashion, on Palm Sunday, at Craigaderyn church, I fear she must have caught cold; it ended in a touch of fever, and I think the dear girl grew delirious, for she had a strange dream about the ghost of Jorwerth Du--you remember that absurd old story?--but the ghost was _you_, and the red-haired daughter of the Gwylliad Cochion, who spirited you away, was--whom think you?--but Lady Estelle! "We had a jolly shooting-season at Vaughan's place in South Wales. With Don and our double-barrelled breech-loader we soon filled a spring-cart, and brought it back in state, with all the hares and the long bright tails of the pheasants hanging over it. Vaughan--who will not relinquish his hope of Winny--and a lot of other fine fellows--old friends, some of them--are coming to have their annual Christmas shooting with me, and I have got two kegs of ammunition all ready in the gun-room. How I wish you were to be with us, Harry! "Golden plover and teal, too, are appearing here now, and flocks of white Norwegian pigeons in Scotland; all indications that we shall have an unusually severe winter; so God help you poor fellows under canvas in the Crimea! In common with all the girls in England, Winny and Dora are busy making mufflings, knitted vests and cuffs, and so forth for the troops; and I have despatched some special hampers of good things, made up and packed by Owen Gwyllim and Gwenny Davis, the housekeeper, for our own lads of the 23rd to make merry with at Christmas, or on St. David's day."