“Cad ta ort?” asked Eamonn.  He had been leaning out over the prow of the boat, looking vaguely into the water, and now turned round.  Eamonn was always asking people, “Cad ta ort?” and before they had time to answer he was saying, or thinking, something else.

“Why do they call this the Gray Lake?” asked the lady sceptic.  “It never looked really gray, did it?”

“Of course it did,” said Eamonn.  “The first man who ever saw it beheld it in the gray light of dawn, and so he called it Baile Loch Riabhach, the Town of the Gray Lough.”

“When might that be?” asked the lady sceptic drily.

“The morning after the town was drowned,” said Eamonn.

“What town?”

“The town we are now rowing over.”

“Good heavens!  Is there a town beneath us?”

“Seadh”, said Eamonn.  “Just now I was trying if I could see anything of the ruins at the bottom of the lake.”

“And you did, of course.”

“I think so.”

“What did you see?”

“Confusion and the vague, glimmering gable of a house or two.  Then the oars splashed and the water became dense.”

“But tell us how the town came to be at the bottom of the lake,” said the man who rowed, shipping his oars.  The boat rocked in the quick wash of the waves.  The water was warming in vivid colours under the glow of the sunset.  Eamonn leaned back in his seat at the prow of the boat.  His eyes wandered away over the water to the slope of meadows, the rise of hills.

“Anois, Eamonn,” said the lady sceptic, still a little drily.  “The story!”

* * * * *

Long and long ago, said Eamonn, there was a sleepy old town lying snug in the dip of a valley.  It was famous for seven of the purest springs of water which ever sparkled in the earth.  They called it the Seven Sisters.  Round the springs they built an immense and costly well.  Over the well was a great leaden lid of extraordinary weight, and by a certain mechanical device this lid was closed on the well every evening at sundown.  The springs became abnormally active between sundown and sunrise, so that there was always a danger that they might flood the valley and destroy the people.  As security against this the citizens had built the great well with its monster lid, and each evening the lid was locked over the well by means of a secret lock and a secret key.

The most famous person in the town of the Seven Sisters was the Keeper of the Key.  He was a man of dignified bearing, important airs, wearing white silk knee-breeches, a green swallow-tail coat, and a cocked hat.  On the sleeve of his coat was embroidered in gold the image of a key and seven sprays of water.  He had great privileges and authority, and could condemn or reprieve any sort of criminal except, of course, a sheep stealer.  He lived in a mansion beside the town, and this mansion was almost as famous as