feet were wearier than my brain. Strangers came from far to see the great
cascade; but none but I--and you, too, Monsieur, now--know the track
through the thicket that leads to the cave under the waters. I found it
by chance, and, like you, was scorched by the fire, though not badly."

"Camille--the cause?"

"Monsieur, I will tell you a wonderful thing. The falling waters there
make a monstrous burning glass, when the hot sun is upon them, which has
melted the rock behind like wax."

"Can that be so?"

"It is true--dear Jesus, I have fearful reason to know it."

He half rose on his elbow, his face, crossed by the bandage, grey as
stone in the gathering dusk. Hereafter he spoke in an awed whisper.

"When the knowledge broke upon me, I grew great to myself in the
possession of a wonderful secret. Day after day I visited the cave and
examined this phenomenon--and yet another more marvellous in its
connection with the first. The huge lens was a simple accident of curved
rocks and convex water, planed smooth as crystal. In other than a
droughty summer it would probably not exist; the spouting torrent would
overwhelm it--but I know not. Was not this astonishing enough? Yet Nature
had worked a second miracle to mock in anticipation the self-sufficient
plagiarism of little man. I noticed that the rays of the sun concentrated
in the lens only during the half-hour of the orb's apparent crossing of
the ravine. Then the light smote upon a strange curved little fan of
water, that spouted from a high crevice at the mouth of the shallow