lilies-of-the-valley, and luxuriance of verdure, and a noise of waters.
Occasionally, I saw little cataracts on high, fluttering like white wild
rags, for they broke in the mid-fall, and were caught away, and
scattered; patches also of reaped hay and barley, hung up, in a singular
way, on stakes six feet high, I suppose to dry; there were perched huts,
and a seemingly inaccessible small castle or burg, but none of these did
I enter: and five bodies only I saw in the gorge, a woman with a babe,
and a man with two small oxen.

About three in the afternoon I was startled to find myself there, and
turned back. It was dark when I again passed through those gloomy
streets of Aadheim, making for the quay, and now I felt both my hunger
and a dropping weariness. I had no thought of entering any house, but
as I passed by one open _porte-cochère_, something, I know not what,
made me turn sharply in, for my mind had become as fluff on the winds,
not working of its own action, but the sport of impulses that seemed
external. I went across the yard, and ascended a wooden spiral stair by
a twilight which just enabled me to pick my way among five or six vague
forms fallen there. In that confined place fantastic qualms beset me; I
mounted to the first landing, and tried the door, but it was locked; I
mounted to the second: the door was open, and with a chill reluctance I
took a step inward where all was pitch darkness, the window-stores being
drawn. I hesitated: it was very dark. I tried to utter that word of
mine, but it came in a whisper inaudible to my ears: I tried again, and
this time heard myself say: '_anyone_?' At the same time I had made
another step forward, and trodden upon a soft abdomen; and at that
contact terrors the most cold and ghastly thrilled me through and
through, for it was as though I saw in that darkness the sudden eyeballs
of Hell and frenzy glare upon me, and with a low gurgle of affright I
was gone, helter-skelter down the stairs, treading upon flesh, across