her,
which here is allowed to fish in peace, like the otter.

The Gouffre de St. Sauveur has its legend. It is said that when the
church of St. Sauveur, on the neighbouring hill, was in imminent
danger at the time of the Revolution, the bells were thrown into the
pool so that they should not fall into the hands of the enemy.
Imaginative people fancy that they can sometimes hear them ringing at
the bottom of the water.

After leaving the pool--now very sombre in the shadow of the wooded
hill--I crossed a ridge separating me from the Gouffre de Cabouy, out
of which flows a tributary of the Ouysse. Thence I reached the deep
and singularly savage gorge of the Alzou, which brought me to
Roc-Amadour, when the after-light of sunset was lingering rosily upon
the naked crags.

* * * * *

Rocks reach far overhead, dazzlingly white where the sunbeams strike
them, and below is a green line of narrow valley. A tinkling of bells
comes from the stony sides of the gorge, where sheep are browsing the
scant herbage and young shoots of southern-wood; and from the curving
fillet of meadow, where the grass seems to grow while the eye watches
it, rises the shrill little song of the stream hurrying over its
yellow bed, which may be dry again to-morrow. This Alzou is no more to
be depended upon than a coquette. After a period of drought, a storm
that has passed away hours ago will cause it suddenly to come hissing
down over the dry stones; but the next day no trace of the flow may be
found save a few pools. Or it may grow to a torrent, even a river,
that in its wild career scoffs at banks, and spreads devastation
through the valley.

It is April, and the nightingales, the swallows, the flowers, the
bees, and the kids, whose trembling voices are heard all about the
rocks, tell me that the spring has come. I cannot rest in my cottage
on the side of the gorge, not even on the balcony that seems to hang
in the air over the depth; the sounds from the valley, especially
those that the imagination hears, are too enticing.

Upon a high ledge of rock to which I have climbed, not without some
unpleasant qualms, I stretch myself out upon a strip of short turf
sprinkled with the flowers of the white rock-rose and bordered with
candy-tuft, and try to drive out of mind the only disagreeable thought
I have at this moment--that of getting down to the path, where I was
safe. The worst part of climbing precipitous places i