ey watched
the long feelers of the shrimps lurking under the wrack.

When they had reached the end of the comb and the edge of the cliff,
they saw a little footpath slanting down the face of it; and below them,
about half-way between the sea and the foot of the precipice, an amazing
chaos of enormous boulders tumbled over and piled one above the other
on a sort of grassy and undulating plain which extended as far as they
could see to the southward, formed by an ancient landslip. On this long
shelf of brushwood and grass, disrupted, as it seemed, by the shocks
of a volcano, the fallen rocks seemed the wreck of a great ruined city
which had once looked out on the ocean, sheltered by the long white wall
of the overhanging cliff.

"That is fine!" exclaimed Mme. Rosemilly, standing still. Jean had come
up with her, and with a beating heart offered his hand to help her down
the narrow steps cut in the rock.

They went on in front, while Beausire, squaring himself on his little
legs, gave his arm to Mme. Roland, who felt giddy at the gulf before
her.

Roland and Pierre came last, and the doctor had to drag his father down,
for his brain reeled so that he could only slip down sitting, from step
to step.

The two young people who led the way went fast till on a sudden they
saw, by the side of a wooden bench which afforded a resting-place about
half-way down the slope, a thread of clear water, springing from a
crevice in the cliff. It fell into a hollow as large as a washing basin
which it had worn in the stone; then, falling in a cascade, hardly two
feet high, it trickled across the footpath which it had carpeted with
cresses, and was lost among the briers and grass on the raised shelf
where the boulders were piled.

"Oh, I am so thirsty!" cried Mme. Rosemilly.

But how could she drink? She tried to catch the water in her hand, but
it slipped away between her fingers. Jean had an idea; he placed a stone
on the path and on this she knelt down to put her lips to the spring
itself, which was thus on the same level.

When she raised her head, covered with myriads of tiny drops, sprinkled
all over her face, her hair, her eye-lashes, and her dress, Jean bent
over her and murmured: "How pretty you look!"

She answered in the tone in which she might have scolded a child:

"Will you be quiet?"

These were the first words of flirtation they had ever exchanged.

"Come," said Jean, much agitated. "Let us go on before they com