more of the contadina of the opera, than of the genuine
mountaineer; so at least thought Mr. Chainmail; but she passed so
rapidly, and took him so much by surprise, that he had little
opportunity for accurate observation. He saw her land, at the
farther extremity, and disappear among the rocks: he rose from his
seat, returned to the mouth of the pass, stepped from stone to
stone across the stream, and attempted to pass round by the other
side of the lake; but there again the abruptly sinking precipice
closed his way.

Day after day he haunted the spot, but never saw again either the
damsel or the coracle. At length, marvelling at himself for being
so solicitous about the apparition of a peasant girl in a coracle,
who could not, by any possibility, be anything to him, he resumed
his explorations in another direction.

One day he wandered to the ruined castle, on the sea-shore, which
was not very distant from his inn; and sitting on the rock, near
the base of the ruin, was calling up the forms of past ages on the
wall of an ivied tower, when on its summit appeared a female
figure, whom he recognised in an instant for his nymph of the
coracle. The folds of the blue gown pressed by the sea-breeze
against one of the most symmetrical of figures, the black feather
of the black hat, and the ringleted hair beneath it fluttering in
the wind; the apparent peril of her position, on the edge of the
mouldering wall, from whose immediate base the rock went down
perpendicularly to the sea, presented a singularly interesting
combination to the eye of the young antiquary.

Mr. Chainmail had to pass half round the castle, on the land side,