She at once recognised the article to be a water-horse's bridle, and accounted for the high temperature of the bit on the ground that the silver still retained the heat that it possessed when in a molten state below ground. The reins, she said, were made of the skin of a certain poisonous serpent that inhabited pools frequented by water-horses. According to her directions, the bridle was hung on a cromag or crook of rowan wood. Its presence brought a blessing to the house, and the drover prospered in all his undertakings. When he died, having no children of his own, he bequeathed the magical bridle to his grandnephew, who prospered in his turn. A pool in the North Esk, in Forfarshire, called the Ponage or Pontage Pool, was at one time the home of a water-horse. This creature was captured by means of a magical bridle, and kept in captivity for some time. While a prisoner he was employed to carry stones to Morphie, where a castle was then being built. One day the bridle was incautiously removed, and the creature vanished, but not before he exclaimed-- "Sair back an' sair banes, Carryin' the Laird o' Morphie's stanes; The Laird o' Morphie canna thrive As lang's the kelpy is alive." His attempted verse-making seems to have gratified the kelpy, for when he afterwards showed himself in the pool he was frequently heard repeating the rhyme. The fate of the castle was disastrous. At a later date it was entirely demolished, and its site now alone remains. Some six miles from the Kirkton of Glenelg, in Inverness-shire, is the small sheet of water known in the district as John MacInnes' Loch. It was so called from a crofter of that name who was drowned there. The circumstances are thus narrated by Mr. J. Calder Ross in "Scottish Notes and Queries" for February, 1893: "John MacInnes found the labour of his farm sadly burdensome. In the midst of his sighing an unknown being appeared to him and promised a horse to him under certain conditions. These conditions John undertook to fulfil. One day, accordingly, he found a fine horse grazing in one of his fields. He happened to be ploughing at the time, and at once he yoked the animal to the plough along with another horse. The stranger worked splendidly, and he determined to keep it, though he well knew that it was far from canny. Every night when he stabled it he spread some earth from a mole's hill over it as a charm; according to another version he merely blessed the animal. One night he forgot his usual precautions: perhaps he was beginning to feel safe. The horse noticed the omission, and seizing poor John in his teeth, galloped off with him. The two disappeared in the loch."