there were other such enchanted places in this land, and one could step aside from the high-road of life into a place of fantasy and sweet illusion. the dawdling, leisured train set us down one day at a wayside station. no houses were in sight, but behind a clump of trees a cloud of steam rose into the air, as if all the world was a-washing. the train dawdled away across the plain and we went towards the trees to find ourselves in face of a shining, misty waterfall. the white stone was streaked with grey and pink; the water boiled up in little cauldrons and fell down in a cloud of steam; at the bottom of the dazzling rocks oleanders bent over the warm streams, maiden-hair fringed the banks; hoary olives with twisted trunks rose above the oleanders.

while we still waited there came up from the side of the steaming river a splendid figure—a woman all in scarlet hung about with silvery chains. “that,” said the guide, “is the washer-woman.” we climbed up behind the waterfall, where it sprang in its strange excitement out of the earth, and found a stone courtyard, built round with little empty houses, one of these prepared for us.

while we paused at the door a moment, i saw between the stones a tiny plant—a plant to conjure with. it is like clover, splashed with crimson. a poet who wore the red cap has said that this crimson is the blood of spring, and, to him, a drop of his own heart’s blood.

a french family were living here in a clean, empty house with airy guest-rooms; and while they regaled us with wild-boar’s flesh they talked of the topics of their day: how the jackals howled about the courtyard in winter; how the rugged way to the roman city was not yet open; how the locusts came down ten years ago, swarm upon swarm, till you could hear the sound of the eating of their hosts by night; how they devoured fruit and leaf and bark like the “army” in joel, and then melted like snow under the sun.

in this strange, quiet land we slept well, and went out next day over the pleasant undulating plain, watered by warm streams with their bordering of oleander and fern, and sheltered by olive and carob.

at last we came to a place where a grassy bank swept round us in a half circle. “fourteen years ago,” said the guide “the shepherds feeding their flocks close by heard a great noise, and running hither saw the earth had fallen in,” and he pointed as he spoke to a crack in the side of the bank, just such a rent as a great tree makes when it falls, tearing its roots out of the ground. “into that,” he said, “you must go.”

so we went towards it in faith, and found when we got there a man could easily pass in. as we descended into the hot twilight inside the ground a bat flew out. we went down-hill until the guide stopped us, where there seemed to lie at our feet a little blue dust over the stones, for this was the still blue water of a lake that stretched away into deep and deeper darkness. as we stood we heard out of the darkness the splash of oars, a light shone on the water, and round the sheer wall of rock on the right came a boat with a lantern at its prow.

into this we stepped, and it moved on into the deep shadows. out of the dark water rose great stalagmites like columns, and stalactites dropped to meet them like heavy pendants from some vaulted roof. we moved round rocky chambers where the lantern shone on the walls, and through halls whose boundaries were unrevealed; all sense of direction and of time was lost till a flash of lightning seemed to fall on the water. it was only the reflected light of a grey day, filtered through the rent in the earth down which we had come, but after that great darkness it seemed dazzling.

so we went up again to the light of day, and back through that pleasant land. but when we came away, i brought with me a leaf of the crimson-splashed clover “to witness if i lie.”