night in the cavern. When the sun again lit up the passage leading from his
prison, the boy plunged, and a few seconds afterwards he was sitting on the
river-bank drying himself in the sun.

* * * * *

I have entered upon the tenancy of a small house beside the Dordogne at
Beynac, a village a few miles below La Roque, partly crouching beneath a
very high rock, and partly built upon its terraces or ledges up to the
inner wall of a feudal castle that was much modified and refashioned in
later ages under the pressure of two forces--time, that ruins, and the
eternal striving of each generation to attain its own ideal of comfort and
elegance. But the grand old keep still rears its rectangular mass behind
and far above the later masonry, and when the evening sun shines upon it,
the stones, no longer gray, wear again their bright colour of six or seven
centuries ago. Presently, as the glow moves higher, the battlements and
machicolations take a golden clearness that marks every detail against the
blue depth of sky whose fire is fading and preparing to change into the
calm splendour that mingles with the dusk. Between the base of the rock and
the river is just space enough for a road, which is dazzlingly white now,
and well powdered with dust; but in winter it not infrequently disappears
under water.

[Illustration: BEYNAC.]

On the opposite shore, above a shelving beach of yellow pebbles and a
broken line of osiers, stretch meadows that are intensely green in spring,
and would be quickly so again if rain were to fall; but now they are very
brown, and the long-tailed sheep that wander over them, tinkling their
bells, like to keep near the Dordogne, where they can moisten their mouths