A diverting legend explains the _low-lying situation of Ballindalloch Castle_, a beautiful specimen of baronial architecture, standing near the junction of the Spey and the Avon. In planning the place, somewhere about 1545, the laird fully intended to secure a wide prospect, and to that end, chose a commanding site. But his views did not commend themselves to the Powers of the Air, and the masons could make no progress. Every night, when the workers had retired from building the walls, a prodigious gale came roaring from the summit of Ben Rinnes and swept stones and mortar into the bed of the Avon. The laird, sorely puzzled at this strange phenomenon, lay in watch one night, with the result that he was blown off his feet, and landed right up among the branches of a holly-tree. Having taken the conceit out of the laird in this abrupt way, the Mysterious Power, chuckling in fiendish fashion, called out "_Build on the cow-haugh_." Frightened out of his wits, the laird was only too glad to comply. THE WISHING WELL. Round the old Castle of Rothes clings a legend of a more pathetic kind. "Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralise my song," says Spenser, and it is with these well-worn but ever-fresh subjects that the story deals. The heiress of one of the old lairds of Rothes, being allowed to roam at will with her foster-mother, cast an eye of love on the son of the laird of Arndilly. As in ballad lore, the love seems to have been immediate, reciprocal, and unquenchable. The girl's father, hearing of the attachment, summarily forbade it, and commanded his daughter to turn her back on young Arndilly, and take a different road in future. But as journeys end in lovers meeting, the two young people, by whatever way they set out, invariably met at the _Wishing Well_. A sad severance came, however, for young Arndilly, like so many mediæval knights of song who had faithful mistresses, must needs go crusading to the Holy Land. During his absence, the lady hied daily to the Wishing Well, and many a tear she let fall therein as she thought of the lad that was so far away. But after many a month, back from Palestine came young Arndilly, and went, of course, straight to the old trysting-place, where he found his lady-love praying for his safe return. The meeting was rapturous but tragically short. A dark shape glided upon the scene, and drove a fatal dirk in the young soldier's back. The lady shrieked aloud and swooned away. For the rest of her life she was an imbecile: she never left the castle, and spent her time crooning a plaintive song and rocking a cradle. Her ghost still haunts the place, and those who have ears to hear can, at nightfall, make out, above the sough of the wind, the mournful notes of a weird lullaby, and mysterious cradle-rockings within the ruined walls. Close by the Well, at the spot of the murder, a bush sprang up, whereof the leaves resembled crosses; in autumn they turned