"
"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 no pulpit to protect
you from him, but stuck so to his text that there was no amusement
to be got out of the business!"
She did not know that if she could have met him, breaking the
ocean-tide of his thoughts with fitting opposition, his answers
would have come short and sharp as the flashes of waves on rocks.
"If Mr. Grant believes in such things," said Mr. Graeme, "he must
find himself at home in the castle, every room of which way well be
the haunt of some weary ghost!"
"I do not believe," said Donal, "that any work of man's hands,
however awful with crime done in it, can have nearly such an
influence for belief in the marvellous, as the still presence of
live Nature. I never saw an old castle before--at least not to make
any close acquaintance with it, but there is not an aspect of the
grim old survival up there, interesting as every corner of it is,
that moves me like the mere thought of a hill-side with the veil of
the twilight coming down over it, making of it the last step of a
stair for the descending foot of the Lord.
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