standing pale before
her, and, with his finger on his lip, enforcing the continued
necessity of silence. He then placed himself at his length on the
floor, and began to stretch himself out and out, longer and longer,
until his head nearly reached to one end of the vast room, and his
feet to the other.

This horror overcame her. The ill-starred lady uttered a wild scream,
whereupon the castle and all that was within it, sank in a moment to
the bottom of the lake.

But, once in every seven years, by night, the Earl of Desmond and his
retinue emerge, and cross the lake, in shadowy cavalcade. His white
horse is shod with silver. On that one night, the earl may ride till
daybreak, and it behoves him to make good use of his time; for, until
the silver shoes of his steed be worn through, the spell that holds
him and his beneath the lake, will retain its power.

When I (Miss Anne Baily) was a child, there was still living a man
named Teigue O'Neill, who had a strange story to tell.

He was a smith, and his forge stood on the brow of the hill,
overlooking the lake, on a lonely part of the road to Cahir Conlish.
One bright moonlight night, he was working very late, and quite alone.
The clink of his hammer, and the wavering glow reflected through the
open door on the bushes at the other side of the narrow road, were the
only tokens that told of life and vigil for miles around.

In one of the pauses of his work, he heard the ring of many hoofs
ascending the steep road that passed his forge, and, standing in this
doorway, he was just in time to see a gentleman, on a white horse, who
was dressed in a fashion the like of which the smith had never seen
before. This man was accompanied and followed by a mounted retinue, as
strangely dressed as he.

They seemed, by the clang and clatter that announced their approach,
to be riding up the hill at a hard hurry-scurry gallop; but the pace
abated as they drew near, and the rider of the white horse who, from
his grave and lordly air, he assumed to be a man of rank, and
accustomed to command, drew bridle and came to a halt before the
smith's door.

He did not speak, and all his train were silent, but he beckoned to
the smith, and pointed down to one of his horse's hoofs.

Teigue stooped and raised it, and held it just long enough to see that
it was shod with a silver shoe; which, in one place, he said, was worn
as thin as a shilling. Instantaneously, his situation was made
apparent t