of hair, made it look like
the decaying hide of some huge antediluvian ruminant. On the dreariest
part of the dreary slope rose the ruins of a tower, and crumbling walls
and battlements.

"Whatever possessed folks to build there?" said Miss Elsie. "If they
were poor, it might be some excuse; but that those old swells, or
chiefs, should put up a castle in such a God-forsaken place gets ME."

"But don't you know, they WERE poor, according to our modern ideas, and
I fancy they built these things more for defense than show, and really
more to gather in cattle--like one of your Texan ranches--after a raid.
That is, I have heard so; I rather fancy that was the idea, wasn't it?"
It was the Englishman who had spoken, and was now looking around at the
other passengers as if in easy deference to local opinion.

"What raid?" said Miss Elsie, animatedly. "Oh, yes; I see--one of their
old border raids--moss-troopers. I used to like to read about them."

"I fancy, don't you know," said the Englishman slowly, "that it wasn't
exactly THAT sort of thing, you know, for it's a good way from the
border; but it was one of their raids upon their neighbors, to lift
their cattle--steal 'em, in fact. That's the way those chaps had. But
of course you've read all about that. You Americans, don't you know, are
all up in these historical matters."

"Eh, but they were often reprisals," said a Scotch passenger.

"I don't suppose they took much trouble to inquire if the beasts
belonged to an enemy," said the Englishman.

But here Miss Elsie spoke of castles generally, and averred that the
dearest wish of her life was to see Macbeth's castle at Glamis, where
Duncan was murdered. At which the Englishman, still deferentially,
mistrusted the fact that the murder had been committed there, and
thought that the castle to which Shakespeare probably referred, if he
hadn't invented the murder, too, was farther north, at Cawdor. "You
know," he added playfully, "over there in America you've discovered that
Shakespeare himself was an invention."

This led to some retaliating brilliancy from the young lady, and when
the coach stopped at the next station their conversation had presumably
become interesting enough to justify him in securing a seat nearer to
her. The talk returning to ruins, Miss Elsie informed him that they were
going to see some on Kelpie Island. The consul, from some instinctive
impulse,--perhaps a recollection of Custer's peculiar methods