talking to the superintendent of the work, a cultured
archaeologist. When he began his descent of the mountain, a train on the
funicular railroad was feeling its way cautiously down the steep
mountainside, like a child on tiptoe. A little weak, irritable sniff
came up from its engine as the toy train paused at one of the three
stopping places below La Turbie. It was like a very young girl blowing
her nose after crying.

Vanno did not go down to the low levels; but asking the way of an old
peasant whose head was wrapped in a red handkerchief, he learned how to
find the hill-village of Roquebrune, keeping to the mule paths. He had
made up his mind to invite himself to lunch with his old friend the
cure.

This was another world from the world of the Casino and shops and
hotels. The very air was different; nimble, and crystal clean. All the
perfumes were aromatic; balsam of pine, and the country sweetness of
thyme and mint, the pure breath of nature. Sloping down the mountains
eastward toward Italy and descending more than halfway from La Turbie,
Vanno came to the rock-town with the ruined castle which Mary had looked
up to from Monte Carlo in last night's sunset. It seemed to have slid
from a taller height above, and to have been arrested by miracle before
much harm was done; and Vanno remembered the cure's first letter which
had told him the legend of the place: how Roquebrune in punishment for
the sins of its inhabitants was shaken off its high eyrie by a great
earthquake, but stopped on the shoulder of the mountain through
intercession of the Virgin, the special patron _sainte vierge_ of the
district. The town and its dominating castle seen from below showed as
if flattened against the mountain's breast; but coming into the place on
foot, the mountain retired into the background, and the huge mediaeval
ruin was sovereign lord of all.

The whole village had been made by robbing the castle of brick and
stone, as La Turbie was built of the Trophy. The castle itself grew out
of the rock, so that it was difficult to see where nature's work ended
or men's began; and the old, old houses crowding up to and huddled
against its foundations had cramped themselves into ledges and boulders
like men making their last stand in a mountain battle. The streets were
tunnels, with vistas of long, dark stone stairways running up and down
into mystery. Here and there above secretive doorways were beautiful
carvings set into the thick ston