ight path,
or indeed from any path that could be travelled with safety, except by
daylight. He invited them to a lodging in a lone hut on the borders of
the lake, where he and his wife subsisted by eel-catching and other
precarious pursuits. The simplicity and openness of his manner
disarmed suspicion. The offer was accepted, and the benighted heroes
found themselves breathing fish-odours and turf-smoke for the night,
under a shed of the humblest construction. His family consisted of a
wife and one child only; but the strangers preferred a bed by the
turf-embers to the couch that was kindly offered them.

The cabin was built of the most simple and homely materials. The walls
were pebble-stones from the sea-beach, cemented with clay. The
roof-tree was the wreck of some unfortunate vessel stranded on the
coast. The whole was thatched with star-grass or sea-reed, blackened
with smoke and moisture.

"You are but scantily peopled hereabouts," said Harrington, for lack
of other converse.

"Why, ay," returned the peasant; "but it matters nought; our living is
mostly on the water."

"And it might be with more chance of company than on shore; we saw a
woman swimming or diving there not long ago."

"Have ye seen her?" inquired both man and dame with great alacrity.

"Seen whom?" returned the guest.

"The Meer-woman, as we call her."

"We saw a being, but of what nature we are ignorant, float and
disappear as suddenly as though she were an inhabitant of yon world of
waters."

"Thank mercy! Then she will be here anon."

Curiosity was roused, though it failed in procuring the desired
intelligence. She might be half-woman half-fish for aught they knew.
She always came from the water, and was very kind to them and the
babe. Such was the sum of the information; yet when they spoke of the
child there was evidently a sort of mystery and alarm, calculated to
awaken suspicion.

Harrington looked on the infant. It was on the woman's lap asleep,
smiling as it lay; and an image of more perfect loveliness and repose
he had never beheld. It might be about a twelvemonth old; but its
dress did not correspond with the squalid poverty by which it was
surrounded.

"Surely this poor innocent has not been stolen," thought he. The child
threw its little hands towards him as it awoke; and he could have
wept. Its short feeble wail had smitten him to the heart.

Suddenly they heard a low murmuring noise at the window.

"She is there,"