red to
draw its circle about the city walls, had fallen under a spell. It met
me here a featureless, brimming ditch, and wound away in torpid coils to
the monotonous horizon. And now this shrunken city, its edges dead and
fallen to decay, these naked levels, where not even a bittern's voice
had courage to startle the stillness, filled me, in spite of myself,
with a vague apprehensiveness. Just as one who is groping in profound
darkness feels his eyes dilate in the effort to catch the least glimmer
of light, I found my senses all on the strain, attentive to their very
utmost. Though the atmosphere was heavy and deadening, my eyes were so
watchful that not even the uprising of some weeds, trodden down,
perhaps, hours before by a passing foot, escaped their notice. My
nostrils were keenly conscious of the sick metallic odor from the
marshes, of the pleasanter perfume of dry reed panicles, of the chill,
damp smell of mouldering stone-work, and of a strangely disagreeable
haunting essence from a certain dull-colored weed, whose leaves, which
shot up within tempting reach of my hand, I had idly bruised in passing.
My ears, for all their painful expectancy, heard at first no sound save
the rustle of a frightened mouse in the dead grass near; but at length
they detected the gurgle of running water, made audible by a faint stray
wind which breathed in my direction.

Instinctively I turned and followed the sound. On my right a huge
fragment of the wall jutted into the marsh, and passing this I saw
before me, brightened by the sunset, a narrow stretch of dry, baked
soil, raised somewhat above the level of the pools, and strewn with
shattered bricks and scraps of tiling and potsherds. The musical lapsing
of the water now fell upon my ears distinctly, and I saw a little way
off a quaint old fountain, standing half a stonecast clear of the wall.
With the sunlight bathing it, the limpid water sparkling away from its
base, it was the only cheerful object in the landscape; yet I felt an
unaccountable reluctance to approach it. The evil enchantment which
seemed to brood over the place, the weird fantasies chasing each other
through my unconsenting brain, annoyed me greatly, for I profess to hold
my imagination pretty well under control, and to have but small concern
for ghostly horrors. Shaking aside my nervousness, I began to whistle
softly as I strolled up to examine the old fountain. But on noticing how
lugubrious, how appropriate to