cure."

"How was it?" asked Mr. Graeme.

"By having nobody to talk to. I learned it on the hill-side with the
sheep, and in the meadows with the cattle. At college I thought I was
nearly cured of it; but now, in my comparative solitude at the castle,
it seems to have returned."

"Come here," said Mr. Graeme, "when you find it getting too much for
you: my sister is quite equal to the task of re-curing you."

"She has not begun to use her power yet!" remarked Donal, as Miss
Graeme, in hoydenish yet not ungraceful fashion, made an attempt to box
the ear of her slanderous brother--a proceeding he had anticipated, and
so was able to frustrate.

"When she knows you better," he said, "you will find my sister Kate
more than your match."

"If I were a talker," she answered, "Mr. Grant would be too much for
me: he quite bewilders me! What do you think! he has been actually
trying to persuade me--"

"I beg your pardon, Miss Graeme; I have been trying to persuade you of
nothing."

"What! not to believe in ghosts and necromancy and witchcraft and the
evil eye and ghouls and vampyres, and I don't know what all out of
nursery stories and old annuals?"

"I give you my word, Mr. Graeme," returned Donal, laughing, "I have not
been persuading your sister of any of these things! I am certain she
could be persuaded of nothing of which she did not first see the common
sense. What I did dwell upon, without a doubt she would accept it, was
the evident fact that writing and printing have done more to bring us
into personal relations with the great dead, than necromancy, granting
the magician the power he claimed, could ever do. For do we not come
into contact with the being of a man when we hear him pour forth his
thoughts of the things he likes best to think about, into the ear of
the universe? In such a position does the book of a great man place
us!--That was what I meant to convey to your sister."

"And," said Mr. Graeme, "she was not such a goose as to fail of
understanding you, however she may have chosen to put on the garb of
stupidity."

"I am sure," persisted Kate, "Mr. Grant talked so as to make me think
he believed in necromancy and all that sort of thing!"

"That may be," said Donal; "but I did not try to persuade you to
believe."

"Oh, if you hold me to the letter!" cried Miss Graeme, colouring a
little.--"It would be impossible to get on with such a man," she
thought, "for he not only preached when you had