sudden, in the midst of this tangle of straight clefts and sharp-pointed
angles, we came on a little rounded niche where the wall was scooped out in
a graceful curve from about our own height to the ground. It was all as
smooth and softly rounded as if wrought by a mason's chisel, and as we
stood looking at it with surprise, because it was so different from all the
rest, a movement of the lantern showed us a greater wonder still. At our
feet, in a smooth round basin, bubbled the spring, and looked so like a
great dark eye looking up at us in a dumb fury that we both stood stark
still staring back at it.

The dark water rushed up from below in coils and writhings like the up-leap
of the tide in the Gouliot Pass, and our lantern set golden rings in it
which floated brokenly from the centre to the sides, and gave to it a
strange look of life and understanding. So strong was the pressure from
below that the centre of the little pool seemed higher than the sides. It
looked as though the pent-up force within was striving all the time to
shoot up to the roof and any moment might succeed.

But the strangest thing of all was that with all this look of hidden power
there was no sound, and no drop of water overflowed the hollow basin. The
ground we stood on was a slab of solid rock and dry as bone,--no splash, no
sound, no drop outside,--only the silent and powerful up-thrust of the
water from below, the silent golden rings that tumbled to the sides of the
basin, and the constant expectation of something more which never came.

It was Carette's quick understanding that named it.

"It is like Krok," she whispered, and the word was said. It was all as like
Krok--not the outside man, but the inner Krok, dumb and powerful, silently
doing his appointed work--as anything that could be imagined.