“’Tis not the sayson for annything worth shooting,” she said, and then wondered if it was an impertinent remark. “I know that,” he replied. “But I’ve nothing else to do, just at the moment, and you can keep yourself walking better if you’ve got a gun, and then, of course, in a strange country there’s always the chance that something curious _may_ turn up to shoot. Fact is, I didn’t care so much after all whether I shot anything or not. You see, castles are new things to me--we don’t grow ’em where I came from--and it’s fun to me to mouse around among the stones and walls and so on. But this is the wildest and lonesomest thing I’ve run up against yet. I give you my word, I’d been lying here so long, watching those mildewed old towers there and wondering what kind of folks built ’em and lived in ’em, that when I saw you galloping down the rocks here--upon my word, I half thought it was all a fairy story. You know the poor people really believe in that sort of thing, here. Several of them have told me so.” Kate actually felt herself smiling upon the young man. “I’m afraid you can’t always believe them,” she said. “Some of them have deludthering ways with strangers--not that they mane anny harm by it, poor souls!” “But a young man down below here, to-day,” continued the other--“mind you, a _young-man_--told me solemnly that almost every night he heard with his own ears the shindy kicked up by the ghosts on the hill back of his house, you know, inside one of those ringed Danes’ forts, as they call ’em. He swore to it, honest Injun.” The girl started in spite of herself, stirred vaguely by the sound of this curious phrase with which the young man had finished his remarks. But nothing definite took shape in her thoughts concerning it> and she answered him freely enough: “Ah, well, I’ll not say he intinded desate. They’re a poetic people, sir, living here alone among the ruins of what was wance a grand country, and now is what you see it, and they imagine visions to thimselves. ’Tis in the air, here. Sure, you yourself”--she smiled again as she spoke--“credited me with being a fairy. Of course,” she added, hastily, “you had in mind the legend of the lake, here.” “How do you mean--legend?” asked the young man, in frank ignorance. “Sure, here in these very waters is a woman, with the shape of a horse, who appears to people, and when they see her, they--they die, that’s all.” “Well, that’s a good deal, I should think,” he responded, lightly. “No, I hadn’t heard of that before; and, besides, you--why, you came down the hill, there, skipping like a lamb on the mountains, not a bit like a horse.” The while Kate turned his comparison over in her mind to judge whether she liked it or not, the young man shifted his gun to his shoulder, as if to indicate that the talk had lasted long enough. Then she swiftly blamed herself for having left this signal to him. “I’ll not be keeping you,” she said, hurriedly.