ate in the demesne wall swung open and we passed out.

THE GRAY LAKE

"I can see every colour in the water except gray," said the lady who was
something of a sceptic.

"That," said the humorist, tilting back his straw hat, "is the very
reason they call it the Gray Lake. The world bristles with misnomers."

"Which explains," said the lady sceptic, "why they call Eamonn a
_seannachie_."

"Hi!" called out the humorist. "Do you hear that, Eamonn?"

"_Cad ta ort?_" asked Eamonn. He had been leaning out over the prow of
the boat, looking vaguely into the water, and now turned round. Eamonn
was always asking people, "_Cad ta ort?_" and before they had time to
answer he was saying, or thinking, something else.

"Why do they call this the Gray Lake?" asked the lady sceptic. "It never
looked really gray, did it?"

"Of course it did," said Eamonn. "The first man who ever saw it beheld
it in the gray light of dawn, and so he called it _Baile Loch Riabhach_,
the Town of the Gray Lough."

"When might that be?" asked the lady sceptic drily.

"The morning after the town was drowned," said Eamonn.

"What town?"

"The town we are now rowing over."

"Good heavens! Is there a town beneath us?"

"_Seadh_", said Eamonn. "Just now I was trying if I could see anything
of the ruins at the bottom of the lake."

"And you did, of course."

"I think so."

"What did you see?"

"Confusion and the vague, glimmering gable of a house or two. Then the
oars splashed and the water became dense."

"But tell us how the town came to be at the bottom of the lake," said
the man who rowed, shipping his oars. The boat rocked in the quick wash
of the waves. The water was warming in vivid colours under the glow of
the sunset. Eamonn leaned back in his seat at the prow of the boat. His
eyes wandered away over the water to the slope of meadows, the rise of
hills.

"_Anois, Eamonn_," said the lady sceptic, still a little drily. "The
story!"

* * * * *

Long and long ago, said Eamonn, there was a sleepy old town lying snug
in the dip of a valley. It was famous for seven of the purest springs of
water which ever sparkled in the earth. They called it the Seven
Sisters. Round the springs they built an immense and costly well. Over
the well was a great leaden lid of extraordinary weight, and by a
certain mechanical device this lid was closed on the well every evening
at sundown. The springs became abnorma