She was about two years younger than myself, I fancied. Her dress was some rich white stuff which looked eerie in the shade of the beeches, and her long hair fell over her shoulders in plentiful curls. She had wide, frightened blue eyes and a delicately-featured face, and as for the rest I know not how to describe her, so I will not try. I, with no more manners than a dog, stood staring at her, wholly forgetful of the appearance I must present, without shoes and stockings, coat or waistcoat, and dripping with Tweed water. She spoke first, in a soft southern tone, which I, accustomed only to the broad Scots of Jean Morran, who had been my nurse, fell in love with at once. Her whole face was filled with the extremest terror. "Oh, sir, be you the water-kelpie?" she asked. I could have laughed at her fright, though I must have been like enough to some evil spirit; but I answered her with my best gravity. "No, I am no kelpie, but I had gone to sleep and fell into the stream. My coat and shoes are in a hole two miles down, and my name is John Burnet of Barns." All this I said in one breath, being anxious to right myself in her eyes; also with some pride in the last words. It was pretty to see how recognition chased the fear from her face. "I know you," she said. "I have heard of you. But what do you in the dragon’s hole, sir? This is my place. The dragon will get you without a doubt." At this I took off my bonnet and made my best bow. "And who are you, pray, and what story is this of dragons? I have been here scores of times, and never have I seen or heard of them." This with the mock importance of a boy. "Oh, I am Marjory," she said, "Marjory Veitch, and I live at the great house in the wood, and all this place is my father’s and mine. And this is my dragon’s den;" and straightway she wandered into a long tale of Fair Margot and the Seven Maidens, how Margot wed the Dragon and he turned forthwith into a prince, and I know not what else. "But no harm can come to me, for look, I have the charm," and she showed me a black stone in a silver locket. "My nurse Alison gave it me. She had it from a great fairy who came with it to my cradle when I was born." "Who told you all this?" I asked in wonder, for this girl seemed to carry all the wisdom of the ages in her head. "Alison and my father, and my brother Michael and old Adam Noble, and a great many more—" Then she broke off. "My mother is gone. The fairies came for her." Then I remembered the story of the young English mistress of Dawyck, who had died before she had been two years in our country. And this child, with her fairy learning, was her daughter.