CHAPTER XXIII.
A TRADITION OF THE CASTLE.
"Well," he said as he drew near, "I am glad to see you two getting on so well!" "How do you know we are ?" asked his sister, with something of the antagonistic tone which both in jest and earnest is too common between near relations.
"Because you have been talking incessantly ever since you met." "We have been only contradicting each other." "I could tell that too by the sound of your voices; but I took it for a good sign." "I fear you heard mine almost only!" said Donal.

"I talk too much, and I fear I have gathered the fault in a way that makes it difficult to cure." "How was it ?" asked Mr.Graeme.
"By having nobody to talk to.

I learned it on the hill-side with the sheep, and in the meadows with the cattle.

At college I thought I was nearly cured of it; but now, in my comparative solitude at the castle, it seems to have returned." "Come here," said Mr.Graeme, "when you find it getting too much for you: my sister is quite equal to the task of re-curing you." "She has not begun to use her power yet!" remarked Donal, as Miss Graeme, in hoydenish yet not ungraceful fashion, made an attempt to box the ear of her slanderous brother--a proceeding he had anticipated, and so was able to frustrate.
"When she knows you better," he said, "you will find my sister Kate more than your match." "If I were a talker," she answered, "Mr.Grant would be too much for me: he quite bewilders me! What do you think! he has been actually trying to persuade me--" "I beg your pardon, Miss Graeme; I have been trying to persuade you of nothing." "What! not to believe in ghosts and necromancy and witchcraft and the evil eye and ghouls and vampyres, and I don't know what all out of nursery stories and old annuals ?" "I give you my word, Mr.Graeme," returned Donal, laughing, "I have not been persuading your sister of any of these things! I am certain she could be persuaded of nothing of which she did not first see the common sense.

What I did dwell upon, without a doubt she would accept it, was the evident fact that writing and printing have done more to bring us into personal relations with the great dead, than necromancy, granting the magician the power he claimed, could ever do.