set out on their adventure. Phoebe
smiled as she looked up, and uttered a prognostic that made Bertha the
more defiant, exhilarated as she was by the delicious compound of sea and
mountain breeze, and by the exquisite view, the roofs of the town sloping
rapidly down, and the hills stretching round, clothed in pine woods, into
which the gray olivettes came stealing up, while beyond lay the sea,
intensely blue, and bearing on its bosom the three Isles d'Or flushed
with radiant colour.

The sisters bravely set themselves to scramble among the rocks, each
surface turned to the sea-breeze exquisitely and fantastically tinted by
coloured lichens, and all interspersed with the classical acanthus' noble
leaves, the juniper, and the wormwood. On they went, winding upwards as
Bertha hoped, but also sideways, and their circuit had lasted a weary
while, and made them exhausted and breathless, when looking round for
their bearings, they found themselves in an enchanted maze of gray rocks,
half hidden in myrtle, beset by the bristly battledores of prickly pear,
and shaded by cork trees. Above was the castle, perched up, and
apparently as high above them as when they began their enterprise; below
was a steep descent, clothed with pines and adorned with white heaths.
The place was altogether strange; they had lost themselves; Bertha began
to repent of her adventure, and Maria was much disposed to cry.

'Never mind, Maria,' said Bertha, 'we will not try to go any higher.
See, here is the dry bed of a torrent that will make a famous path down.
There, that's right. What a picture it is! what an exquisite peep of the
sea between the boughs! What now, what frightens you?'

'The old woman, she looks so horrid.'

'The witch for the lost children? No, no, Maria, she is only gathering
fir cones, and completing the picture in her red _basquine_, brown
jacket, and great hat. I would ask her the way, but that we could not
understand her Provencal.'

'Oh, dear! I wish Phoebe was here! I wish we were safe!'

'If I ever come mountain-climbing again with you at my heels! Take care,
there's no danger if you mind your feet, and we must come out somewhere.'

The somewhere, when the slope became less violent, was among vineyards
and olivettes, no vestige of a path through them, only a very small
cottage, picturesquely planted among the rocks, whence proceeded the
sounds of a _cornet-a-piston_. As Bertha stood considering which way to
take,