This is a creepy place."
"Once I let myself out at Glenfernie without any knowing and came here
by night."
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.
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