at the cliff, fitted for the flight of gull or cormorant rather than the foot of man, still less of gentle maiden:  Hilda was already over the brink:  Jean, following, saw that she was on a path no broader than a goat’s track; the difficulties of the descent need not be described; it was possible for a clear head and practised foot, to the nervous or the unsteady the attempt must have been fatal.  Arrived at the bottom the climbers found themselves in a small cleft strewn with huge boulders; the rocks towered high above them.  Hilda glanced at the moon.  “We must be quick,” said she, showing him some deep caverns in the rock; “there,” she said, “is your home.  Here you are safe; my mother alone knows the secret of these caves.  I must mount again; you must climb with me to mark the path more closely.”  She sprang to the rock and commenced to ascend as nimbly as she had come down.  Jean saw the necessity of taking every precaution; he noted carefully each feature of the track.  Arrived at the summit she bade him farewell.  She pointed out a place where Tita would from time to time leave him provisions, and said that he would find water in the caves; she then tripped quickly off.  Jean did not linger, seeing that if he did so light would fail him for his return.  He crossed the track for the third time, reached the caves, and slept soundly till dawn.

When he awoke he inspected his strange retreat.  He was in a large hall, two hundred feet long, and some fifty feet high and broad; this chamber was entered by a small orifice of no great length, through which he had passed on the preceding night; it was warm, and dry except where the stream of which Hilda had spoken trickled through to the sea.  It was the fissure now known as the Creux Mahie, and to which an easy access has been arranged for the benefit of the curious.  Here Jean passed three months.  Hilda frequently visited him, and always kept him supplied with food; she warned him also when he might safely roam on the cliffs above.  There was no obstacle to her visits, even when they extended to a considerable length, as the mother seemed always to be satisfied as to her absences when Tita accompanied her; and the latter, whose infirmities prevented her from descending, had no means of shortening the interviews.

Thus the lovers had opportunity to study each other’s characters.  The maiden’s pure heart knew no distrust, and Jean was faithful and chivalrous as Sir Galahad.  They spoke not always of love:  words were unnecessary to explain what every look betokened.  Jean found her skilled in strange, mystical, lore, but ignorant of all that sways and rules mankind.  The history of the selfish struggles of human interests and passions was to her a sealed book.  She had been carefully shrouded from the knowledge of evil; but, in order to protect her in the rough turbulent little world in which she lived, it had been necessary to keep her from association with her countrymen, and so she had never mingled