t I tell you, young sir, I've sat jist here
behind those near bushes like, and watched the creatur for an hour at a
time."

"What was it you watched?" asked Caius, superior to the other's
excitement.

"I tell you, it was a girl in the sea; and more than that--she was half
a fish."

The mind of Caius was now entirely scornful.

"You don't believe me," said the old man, nudging him again.

But Caius was polite.

"Well, now"--good-humouredly--"what did you see?"

"I'll tell you jist what I saw." (The old man's excitement was growing.)
"You understand that from the top here you can see across the bay, and
across to the island and out to sea; but you can't see the shore under
the rocky point where it turns round the farm there into the bay, and
you can't see the other shore of the island for the bushes on it."

"In other words, you can see everything that's before your eyes, but you
can't see round a corner."

The old man had some perception that Caius was humorous. "You believe me
that far," he said, with a weak, excited cackle of a laugh. "Well, don't
go for to repeat what I'm going to tell you further, for I'll not have
my old woman frightened, and I'll not have Jim Hogan and the fellows he
gets round him belabouring the thing with stones."

"Heaven forbid!" A gleam of amusement flitted through the mind of Caius
at the thought of the sidelight this threw on Jim's character. For Jim
was not incapable of casting stones at even so rare a curiosity as a
mermaid.

"Now," said the old man, and he laughed again his weak, wheezy laugh,
"if _you_ told _me_, I'd not believe it; but I saw it as sure as I stand
here, and if this was my dying hour, sir, I'd say the same. The first
time it was one morning that I got up very early--I don't jist remember
the reason, but it was before sun-up, and I was walking along here, and
the tide was out, and between me and the island I saw what I thought was
a person swimming in the water, and I thought to myself, 'It's queer,
for there's no one about these parts that has a liking for the water.'
But when I was younger, at Pictou once, I saw the fine folks ducking
themselves in flannel sarks, at what they called a 'bathing-place,' so
the first thing I thought of was that it was something like that. And
then I stood here, jist about where you are now, and the woman in the
water she saw me--"

"Now, how do you know it was a woman?" asked Caius.

"Well, I didn't know for certain that d