."

Ian felt emulation. "Oh, I would do that, too, if there was any need!
Did you see anything?"

"Do you mean the kelpie?"

"Yes."

"No. I saw something--once. But that time I wanted to see how the
stars looked in the water."

Ian looked at the water, that lay like a round mirror, and then to the
vast shell of the sky above. He, too, had love of beauty--a more
sensuous love than Alexander's, but love. This shared perception made
one of the bonds between them.

"It was as still--much stiller than it is to-day! The air was clear
and the night dark and grand. I looked down, and there was the
Northern Crown, clasp and all."

Ian in imagination saw it, too. They sat, chin on knees, upon the
moorside above the Kelpie's Pool. The water was faintly crisped, the
reeds and willow boughs just stirred.

"But the kelpie--did you ever see that?"

"Sometimes it is seen as a water-horse, sometimes as a demon. I never
saw anything like that but once. I never told any one about it. It may
have been just one of those willows, after all. But I thought I saw a
woman."

"Go on!"

"There was a great mist that day and it was hard to see. Sometimes you
could not see--it was just rolling waves of gray. So I stumbled down,
and I was in the rushes before I knew that I had come to them. It was
spring and the pool was full, and the water plashed and came over my
foot. It was like something holding my ankles.... And then I saw
her--if it was not the willow. She was like a fair woman with dark
hair unsnooded. She looked at me as though she would mock me, and I
thought she laughed--and then the mist rolled down and over, and I
could not see the hills nor the water nor scarce the reeds I was in.
So I lifted my feet from the sucking water and got away.... I do not
know if it was the kelpie's daughter or the willow--but if it was the
willow it could look like a human--or an unhuman--body!"

Ian gazed at the pool. He had many advantages over Alexander, he knew,
but the latter had this curious daring. He did more things with
himself and of himself than did he, Ian. There was that in Ian that
did not like this, that was jealous of being surpassed. And there was
that in Ian that would not directly display this feeling, that would
provide it, indeed, with all kinds of masks, but would, with
certainty, act from that spurring, though intricate enough might be
the path between the stimulus and the act.

"It is deep?"

"Aye. Almost bottomless