Mechanically I turned over the leaves and read. The first line interested me, and I read on. It was the quaint monkish story of an ancient saint, and as this exalted personage, whose name is now 'familiar as a household word' to the Parisians, was a countryman of my own, I found some amusement, if I did not discover consolation, in the volume with which honest Martin had favoured me. The history was copiously interspersed by prayers, pious invocations, and occasional bursts of wild enthusiasm, for the admiration of the writer--an old canon of Notre Dame--were at times uncontrollable when writing of the '_Glorieux ami de Dieu, Monseigneur St. Fiacre._' 'The 30th of August is the anniversary of St. Fiacre,' began the volume, 'son of Ewen IV., king of Scotland, who began his reign in the year of our Redemption 605--a king who was educated, as the Black Book of Paisley saith, piously and carefully, under St. Culme, the abbot of Iona, by whom he was reared in all manner of human learning, and in the love of God in works of piety; yet he swerved from the precepts of his peaceful master, by being grievously addicted to war, as the king of Strathclyde and the half-savage Saxons then inhabiting the land now called England found to their cost, in many a battle fought and lost between the Tyne and Humber.' Then the old legendary proceeded to tell us how Fiacre, the son of Ewen and his queen Frivola of Ross, was born in Dunstaffnage, and educated by Conan, Bishop of the Western Isles; and how he proved a brave, valiant, and virtuous prince: till once, when hunting on the wild shores of the Bay of Nigg, a strange adventure befel him. Near a fountain, at which his horse was drinking, he saw a maiden of more than mortal beauty, with snow-white skin and golden hair--the spirit of the water. This was on the 30th of August, the festival of St. Rose of Lima. Of this spirit-woman he became deeply enamoured, and was wont to meet her again and again in the mirk hour, between midnight and morning, until he who sought to give her a human soul was in danger of losing his own, for the spirit was a fiend, who sought the youth's destruction; but Saint Fergus, the Bishop and Confessor, whose cell was hewn in the old craig of Inverugie, and whose right arm is now preserved in the cathedral of Aberdeen, besought the Prince to abandon the fountain, which he blessed and purified, by saying a solemn mass on the spot, after which the spirit appeared no more; but that fountain is still named St. Fiacre's Well, and is famous among the northern peasantry for the miraculous cures accomplished by its waters.