“Never.”

“And why?”

Madame shrugged her plump shoulders.

“Who may say?  The ways of the afflicted are not our ways.  Only I know that Camille will never drive his flock to pasture near the lip of that dark valley.”

“That is strange.  Can the place have associations for him connected with his malady?”

“It is possible.  Only the good God knows.”

But I was to know later on, with a little reeling of the reason also.

* * * * *

“Camille, I want to see the Cascade de Buet.”

The hunted eyes of the stricken looked into mine with a piercing glance of fear.

“Monsieur must not,” he said, in a low voice.

“And why not?”

“The waters are bad—­bad—­haunted!”

“I fear no ghosts.  Wilt thou show me the way, Camille?”

“I!” The idiot fell upon the grass with a sort of gobbling cry.  I thought it the prelude to a fit of some sort, and was stepping towards him, when he rose to his feet, waved me off and hurried away down the slope homewards.

Here was food for reflection, which I mumbled in secret.

A day or two afterwards I joined Camille at midday on the heights where he was pasturing his flocks.  He had shifted his ground a little distance westwards, and I could not find him at once.  At last I spied him, his back to a rock, his hand dabbled for coolness in a little runnel that trickled at his side.  He looked up and greeted me with a smile.  He had conceived an affection for me, this poor lost soul.

“It will go soon,” he said, referring to the miniature streamlet.  “It is safe in the woods; but to-morrow or next day the sun will lap it up ere it can reach the skirt of the shadow above there.  A farewell kiss to you, little stream!”

He bent and sipped a mouthful of the clear water.  He was in a more reasonable state than he had shown for long, though it was now close on the moon’s final quarter, a period that should have marked a more general tenor of placidity in him.  The summer solstice, was, however, at hand, and the weather sultry to a degree—­as it had been, I did not fail to remember, the year of his seizure.

“Camille,” I said, “why to-day hast thou shifted thy ground a little in the direction of the Buet ravine?”

He sat up at once, with a curious, eager look in his face.

“Monsieur has asked it,” he said.  “It was to impel Monsieur to ask it that I moved.  Does Monsieur seek a guide?”

“Wilt thou lead me, Camille?”

“Monsieur, last night I dreamed and one came to me.  Was it my father?  I know not, I know not.  But he put my forehead to his breast, and the evil left it, and I remembered without terror.  ’Reveal the secret to the stranger,’ he said; ’that he may share thy burden and comfort thee; for he is strong where thou art weak, and the vision shall not scare him.’  Monsieur, wilt thou come?”