Then he came out with an artfully simulated interest in the weather, and, nudging Caius at intervals, apparently to enforce silence on a topic concerning which the young man as yet knew nothing, he wended his way with him along a path through a thicket of young fir-trees which bordered the road.
The two men were going towards that part of the shore to which Caius was bound.

They reached the place where the child had been drowned before the communication was made, and stood together, like a picture of the personification of age and youth, upon the top of the grassy cliff.
"You'll not believe me," said the old man, with excitement obviously growing within him, "but 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.