raid to go and see because the dwarfs have 'the evil eye,'
and would bring them bad luck."

"What superstitious nonsense!" laughed Rachel. "How _can_ they make up
such stuff?"

"Not altogether such nonsense as you think," corrected Miss Bickford,
who was a student of archaeology; "indeed _I_ find it intensely
interesting. It's a case of survival of tradition. A few thousand years
ago no doubt a race of little short dark Stone Age men actually lived in
those caves, and took good care to avenge themselves on any of the
taller, stronger tribes who interfered with them and tried to push them
out of their territory. The remembrance of them would be handed down
long after they had become extinct, and, of course their doings were
exaggerated, and their cunning tricks were set down to magic. Just as
the prehistoric monsters lingered as dragons and firedrakes, so the
small early inhabitants of Europe have passed into dwarfs and brownies
and pixies. If anybody cared to dig in those caves I dare say flint
weapons might be found. It's a chance for the local antiquarian society
if they'd only take it."

Leaving the gorge the party turned up a steep and very narrow alley
between walls nine or ten feet high. At the tops of these walls were
raised gardens planted with orange and lemon trees, whose fruit, in all
stages of green, gold, and yellow, overshadowed the path. Across some of
them were erected shelters of reeds or plaited grass, to prevent too
quick ripening, but in some of the orchards the crop was ready, and
workers were busy with ladders and baskets gathering their early
harvests. It was a picturesque route, for the sides of the deep walls
were covered with beautiful maidenhair ferns, and over the tops hung
geraniums or clumps of white iris or purple stocks or clusters of little
red roses. Here and there, at a corner, was a wayside shrine with a
faded picture of the Madonna, and a quaint brass lamp in front, and
perhaps some flowers laid there by loving hands; dark-eyed smiling
little children were playing about and giving each other rides in
home-made hand-carts, and at one point the girls stood aside to let pass
a donkey so loaded with tiny bamboo trees that it looked a mere moving
mass of green.

At length the deep alley between the orange orchards gave way to a
different scene. They had been climbing steadily uphill, and now found
themselves above the fruit zone and among the olive groves. The high
walls had disappea