“There’s never a nearer landing-place, thin, than where we left our boat, a half-mile beyant here,” said Murphy. “Faith, miss, ’tis the belafe they went up and down be the aid of the little people. ’T is well known that, on windy nights, there do be grand carrin’s-on hereabouts. Sure, in the lake forninst us it was that Kian O’Mahony saw the enchanted woman with the shape on her of a horse, and died of the sight. Manny’s the time me own father related to me that same.”
“Oh, true; that would be the lake of the legend,” said Kate. “Let us go down to it, Murphy. I’ll dip me hand for wance in water that’s been really bewitched.”
The girl ran lightly down the rolling side of the hill, and across the rock-strewn hollows and mounds which stretched toward the castellated cliff. The base of the third and most inland tower was washed by a placid fresh-water pond, covering an area of several acres, and heavily fringed at one end with rushes. As she drew near a heron suddenly rose from the reeds, hung awkwardly for a moment with its long legs dangling in the air, and then began a slow, heavy flight seaward. On the moment Kate saw another even more unexpected sight—the figure of a man on the edge of the lake, with a gun raised to his shoulder, its barrel following the heron’s clumsy course. Involuntarily she uttered a little warning shout to the bird, then stood still, confused and blushing. Stiff-jointed old Murphy was far behind.
The stranger had heard her, if the heron had not. He lowered his weapon, and for a moment gazed wonderingly across the water at this unlooked-for apparition. Then, with his gun under his arm, he turned and walked briskly toward her. Kate cast a searching glance backward for Murphy in vain, and her intuitive movement to draw a shawl over her head was equally fruitless. The old man was still somewhere behind the rocks, and she had only this citified hat and even that not on her head. She could see that the advancing sportsman was young and a stranger.
He came up close to where she stood, and lifted his cap for an instant in an off-hand way. Viewed thus nearly, he was very young, with a bright, fresh-colored face and the bearing and clothes of a gentleman, “I’m glad you stopped me, now that I think of it,” he said, with an easy readiness of speech. “One has no business to shoot that kind of bird; but I’d been tying about here for hours, waiting for something better to turn up, till I was in a mood to bang at anything that came along.”
He offered this explanation with a nonchalant half-smile, as if confident ol its prompt acceptance. Then his face took on a more serious look, as he glanced a second time at her own flushed countenance.
“I hope I haven’t been trespassing,” he added, under the influence of this revised impression.
Kate was, in truth, frowning at him, and there were no means by which he could guess that it was the effect of nervous timidity rather than vexation.
“’Tis not my land,” she managed to say at last, and looked back again for Murphy.
“No—I didn’t think it was anybody’s land,” he remarked, essaying another propitiatory smile. “They told me at Goleen that I could shoot as much as I liked. They didn’t tell me, though, that there was nothing to shoot.”