answered, "of making people love them at first sight."

"In the family?" she repeated again, with that look of drollery upon her face which had almost upset my own gravity. "Never mind: you shall come and see for yourself, two days from now, when I get home from Phoul-a-Phooka."

She slipped down as she spoke from her perilous perch and landed safely on the opposite shore, becoming at once embowered in greenness, a very goddess of the woods. She made a graceful gesture of farewell and turned away, light as a young fawn.

I stood spellbound, watching the path by which she had disappeared. Curiosity was aroused within me, and I felt an uncommon attraction for this being who seemed of a different mould from those of common clay. I fell to dreaming[Pg 11] of her as I walked home through those exquisite scenes of rare and mournful loveliness. The dark story of Erin seemed told in her hills and streams. I was also anxious to discover what was the Phoul-a-Phooka, and who might be the mysterious companion of her journey to that unknown region.

[Pg 11]

I seemed to tread, indeed, on enchanted ground; and I could hardly believe that I was the same being who a month before had been walking down Broadway, stopping to admire the wonderful products of the century's genius in Tiffany's windows, idly surveying the crowds of passers-by, and jostling my way past the Fifth Avenue Hotel. However, I had to keep all my speculations to myself and wait for that visit to the castle, to which I began to look forward with the greatest eagerness. Could the castle itself be a mere myth, the creation of a sensitive imagination? On that point, at least, I determined to satisfy my curiosity as soon as an opportunity occurred.

I found the landlord of the inn alone that evening, his labors done for the day, pipe in mouth, smoking on a bench beside the door. He was a somewhat taciturn man, less loquacious than most of his race and station, and the subject, in some way, did not seem to commend itself to him.

"The castle? To be sure, there's a castle up there beyant. A mighty fine ould place in former times."

"But to whom does it belong now?"

He looked uneasy.

"Who is the owner? Why, that would be hard to tell, though I suppose it's Miss Winifred herself."

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