“Why a gridiron?” asked my uncle.

“The reason he gave, sir, was that it’s just these little things that get left behind, on a picnic; which Sir John, when I reported it, pronounced to be a very good reason.  ‘And, as it happens,’ said he, ’’tis the very reason why Mr. Badcock himself goes with us:  for my son, when he becomes king, will need a Fool, and I have brought a couple in case of accidents.’

“We started then, as Master Prosper will remember, a little before dark; and having lanterns to light the track, and now and then the north star between the tree-tops to give us our bearings, we crossed the valley and came out through a kind of pass upon a second slope, a little nor’-west of the spot where I happened yesterday on Master Prosper.  By this, Sir John’s watch marked ten o’clock and finding us dead-beat by the roughness of the track, he commanded us to lie down and sleep.

“The next morning, after studying his map, he started afresh, still holding northward in the main but bearing back a little to the left—­ that is, toward the sea, which before noon we brought in sight at a place he called La Piana, where, he said, was a fishing village; and so no doubt there was, for we spied a two-three boats moored a little way out from the shore—­looking down upon them through a cleft in the rocks.  The village itself we did not see, but skirted it upon high ground and came down to the foreshore a short two miles beyond it; where we found a beach and a spit of rock, and on the spit a tumble-down tower standing, as lonely as a combed louse.  Above the beach ran a tolerable coast road, which divided itself into two, after crossing a bridge behind the tower; the one following the shore, the other striking inland up the devil of a gorge.  This inland road we took, for two reasons; the first, that by the map it appeared to cut off a corner of our journey; the second, because the map showed a village, not three miles up the gorge, where we might get advice.

“After an hour’s climbing then (for the road twisted uphill along the edge of the torrent) we came to the village, which was called Otta.  Now, the first thing to happen to us in Otta was that we found it empty—­not so much as a dog in the street—­but all the inhabitants on the hill above, in a crowd before a mighty great stone:  and Badcock would have it that they were gathered together in fear of us.  But the true reason turned out to be something quite different.  For this stone overhangs the village, which is built on a stiff slope; and though it has hung there for hundreds of years without moving, the villagers can never be easy that it will not tumble on top of them; and once a year regularly, and at odd times when the panic takes them, they march up and tie it with ropes.  This very thing they were doing as we arrived, and all because some old woman had dreamed of an earthquake.  We took notice that in the crowd and in the gang binding the stone there was no man the right side of fifty (barring a cripple or two); the reason being that all their young men had enlisted in the militia.