ranean stream
must at one time have found an exit here into the Ouysse, and now
water was reversing the process by filling up the ancient conduit. But
for the otters that kept it open, we should probably have seen no
trace of it; and it was for this that we had wriggled our way into the
hideous hole like serpents! I left with the impression that there was
much vanity in searching for the wonders of the subterranean world.

Having brought back the boat, we stopped at the cottage by the
vineyard and tried the juice of the grapes which three weeks before
were basking in the sun. It was now a fragrant wine of a rich purple,
with a certain flavour of the soil that made it the more agreeable.
The fisherman's wife also placed upon the table a loaf of home-made
bread, of an honest brown colour, some of the little Roc-Amadour
cheeses made from goat's milk, and a plate of walnuts. The window
looked out upon the sunny vines, whose leaves were now flaming gold or
ruddy brown; the blue river shone in the hollow below, and through the
open door there came the tinkling of bells from the rocky wastes where
the small long-tailed sheep were moving slowly homeward, nibbling the
stunted herbage as they went.

This sound reminded us that the sun would soon drop behind the hill,
and that the Pomoyssin, to which we intended to pay a visit on our way
home, was not a spot that gained attractiveness from the shades of
night. I had heard the country-people speak of it as a peculiarly
horrible and treacherous _gouffre_, and its name, which means
'unwholesome hole,' corresponds to the local opinion of it. The
shepherd children would suffer torture from thirst rather than descend
into the gloomy hollow and dip out a drop of the dark water which is
said to draw the gazer towards it, and then into its mysterious depths
under the rock, by the spell of some wicked power. Some years ago a
woman, supposed to have been drawn there by the evil spirit, was found
drowned, and since then the spot has been avoided even more than it
was before.

It was to this place, then, that we went when the sun was setting. The
way led up a deep little valley which was an absolute desert of
stones. A dead walnut-tree, struck apparently by lightning, with its
old and gnarled branches stretching out on one side like weird arms,
was just the object that the imagination would place in a valley
blighted by the influence of evil spirits, in proximity to a passage
communicating