it at the castle than here!
This is a poor modern place compared to that."

"It is a poor imagination," returned Donal, "that requires age or any
mere accessory to rouse it. The very absence of everything external,
the bareness of the mere humanity involved, may in itself be an
excitement greater than any accompaniment of the antique or the
picturesque. But in this old-fashioned garden, in the midst of these
old-fashioned flowers, with all the gentlenesses of old-fashioned life
suggested by them, it is easier to imagine the people themselves than
where all is so cold, hard, severe--so much on the defensive, as in
that huge, sullen pile on the hilltop."

"I am afraid you find it dull up there!" said Miss Graeme.

"Not at all," replied Donal; "I have there a most interesting pupil.
But indeed one who has been used to spend day after day alone, clouds
and heather and sheep and dogs his companions, does not depend much for
pastime. Give me a chair and a table, fire enough to keep me from
shivering, the few books I like best and writing materials, and I am
absolutely content. But beyond these things I have at the castle a
fine library--useless no doubt for most purposes of modern study, but
full of precious old books. There I can at any moment be in the best
of company! There is more of the marvellous in an old library than
ever any magic could work!"

"I do not quite understand you," said the lady.

But she would have spoken nearer the truth if she had said she had not
a glimmer of what he meant.

"Let me explain!" said Donal: "what could necromancy, which is one of
the branches of magic, do for one at the best?"

"Well!" exclaimed Miss Graeme; "--but I suppose if you believe in
ghosts, you may as well believe in raising them!"

"I did not mean to start any question about belief; I only wanted to
suppose necromancy for the moment a fact, and put it at its best:
suppose the magician could do for you all he professed, what would it
amount to?--Only this--to bring before your eyes a shadowy resemblance
of the form of flesh and blood, itself but a passing shadow, in which
the man moved on the earth, and was known to his fellow-men? At best
the necromancer might succeed in drawing from him some obscure
utterance concerning your future, far more likely to destroy your
courage than enable you to face what was before you; so that you would
depart from your peep into the unknown, merely less able to encounter
the du