I have heard of him as a remarkable man. There was
a clergyman here from Glasgow--I forget his name--so struck with him he
seemed actually to take him for a prophet. He said he was a survival
of the old mystics. For my part I have no turn for extravagance."

"But," said Donal, in the tone of one merely suggesting a possibility,
"a thing that from the outside may seem an extravagance, may look quite
different when you get inside it."

"The more reason for keeping out of it! If acquaintance must make you
in love with it, the more air between you and it the better!"

"Would not such precaution as that keep you from gaining a true
knowledge of many things? Nothing almost can be known from what people
say."

"True; but there are things so plainly nonsense!"

"Yes; but there are things that seem to be nonsense, because the man
thinks he knows what they are when he does not. Who would know the
shape of a chair who took his idea of it from its shadow on the floor?
What idea can a man have of religion who knows nothing of it except
from what he hears at church?"

Mr. Graeme was not fond of going to church yet went: he was the less
displeased with the remark. But he made no reply, and the subject
dropped.

CHAPTER XX.

THE OLD GARDEN.

The avenue seemed to Donal about to stop dead against a high wall, but
ere they quite reached the end, they turned at right angles, skirted
the wall for some distance, then turned again with it. It was a
somewhat dreary wall--of gray stone, with mortar as gray--not like the
rich-coloured walls of old red brick one meets in England. But its
roof-like coping was crowned with tufts of wall-plants, and a few
lichens did something to relieve the grayness. It guided them to a
farm-yard. Mr. Graeme left his horse at the stable, and led the way to
the house.

They entered it by a back door whose porch was covered with ivy, and
going through several low passages, came to the other side of the
house. There Mr. Graeme showed Donal into a large, low-ceiled,
old-fashioned drawing-room, smelling of ancient rose-leaves, their
odour of sad hearts rather than of withered flowers--and leaving him
went to find his sister.

Glancing about him Donal saw a window open to the ground, and went to
it. Beyond lay a more fairy-like garden than he had ever dreamed of.
But he had read of, though never looked on such, and seemed to know it
from times of old. It was laid out in straight lines,