valley towards the peaks of snow.  Still I had in my head this notion of the Englishmen fighting in the room below.  But then I recollected that no Englishmen had come in the night before, and that I had been in the room below, and that there was no bed in it.  Then I opened my window—­a woman screamed, a dog barked, some cocks and hens cackled in a very disturbed humour, and then I could hear nothing but the roaring of the torrent a hundred feet below.  And then it flashed across me what all the noise was about; and I burst out laughing and said “It is only an earthquake,” and went to bed

Next morning I inquired whether any one had heard a noise.  No, nobody had heard anything.  And the driver who had brought me up the valley only winked, but did not choose to speak.  At last at breakfast I asked the pretty little maid who waited what was the meaning of the noise I heard in the night, and she answered, to my intense amusement, “Ah! bah! ce n’etait qu’un tremblement de terre; il y en a ici toutes les six semaines.”  Now the secret was out.  The little maid, I found, came from the lowland far away, and did not mind telling the truth:  but the good people of the place were afraid to let out that they had earthquakes every six weeks, for fear of frightening visitors away:  and because they were really very good people, and very kind to me, I shall not tell you what the name of the place is.

Of course after that I could do no less than ask Madam How, very civilly, how she made earthquakes in that particular place, hundreds of miles away from any burning mountain?  And this was the answer I thought she gave, though I am not so conceited as to say I am sure.

As I had come up the valley I had seen that the cliffs were all beautiful gray limestone marble; but just at this place they were replaced by granite, such as you may see in London Bridge or at Aberdeen.  I do not mean that the limestone changed to granite, but that the granite had risen up out of the bottom of the valley, and had carried the limestone (I suppose) up on its back hundreds of feet into the air.  Those caves with the waterfalls pouring from their mouths were all on one level, at the top of the granite, and the bottom of the limestone.  That was to be expected; for, as I will explain to you some day, water can make caves easily in limestone:  but never, I think, in granite.  But I knew that besides these cold springs which came out of the caves, there were hot springs also, full of curious chemical salts, just below the very house where I was in.  And when I went to look at them, I found that they came out of the rock just where the limestone and the granite joined.  “Ah,” I said, “now I think I have Madam How’s answer.  The lid of one of her great steam boilers is rather shaky and cracked just here, because the granite has broken and torn the limestone as it lifted it up; and here is the hot water out of the boiler actually oozing out of the crack; and the earthquake I heard last night was simply the steam rumbling and thumping inside, and trying to get out.”