feet could be heard from places that seemed far away. But for the rumbling
of the thunder, the only sound from the mysterious world outside would have
been the scream, now like the cry of a cat, now like a puppy's bark, of
an owl flying with muffled wings up and down the valley. Very different,
however, was this little owl's cry from the madman's shout of the great
eagle owl, which I had often heard in the rocky vale of the Alzon. I
threw open the window of my bedroom and looked out upon the night. It
was illumined, not by moon nor by stars, but by lightning flashes, which
followed one another with such rapidity that there was no darkness. The
quivering flame threw an awful brightness into the great woods upon the
tops of the hills.

A few hours later I was wandering through these woods, which were now
filled with another light that dried the dripping leaves.

Some miles of forest, then cultivated slopes, and at length the Dordogne
again. I was growing rather weary of searching for the mediaeval town of
Domme, when I recognised it by its old ramparts upon the summit of a high
bare hill, which looked very forbidding indeed where it changed to rock,
whose naked escarpments seemed to float as inaccessible as a cloud in the
blue air far above the valley. As I climbed the shadeless stony hill in the
mid-day sun-glare, I thought that if the soldiers of five or six centuries
ago used strong language as they toiled up here in their heavy armour, it
was excusable. I was wellnigh repenting of my resolution to reach Domme,
when, by a turn of the road, I found myself not many yards in front of a
fortified gateway of the fourteenth century, with a drumtower on each side
connected by a curtain with the ramparts. At first glance nothing seemed to
be wanting. The towers, however, were ruinous in the upper part, and the
battlements had disappeared.