"Many a summer afternoon," he said, "we spent climbing the valley hills, and playing upon the rock in which is St. Martin's well; and never once, not even in the hottest summers--and some were very hot--did we find the well dry. Always there was water in it. I cannot tell why. But it was so." Next morning I mounted my bicycle, and went to see for myself, whether, after a week of cloudless October skies, I should find water in St. Martin's well. Following the valley road as far as Pommard--every name hereabouts is borrowed unblushingly from a wine-list--you turn northward, and, always following the railway, come to the little, grey village of Nantoux, where the valley narrows, until you see, on your right, almost overhanging the road, a ridge of jagged, grey rock, crossing the sparsely-wooded hill. Just before it, on the Nantoux side, at a rather lower elevation, projects another shoulder of the rock. There is the Puits de St. Martin. If you call a passer-by, or one of the workmen in the roadside quarries, he will show you the way, or take you up. It is not very easy to find without help. You pass the overhanging cliff, and take a narrow path, at the first bend of the road; not the wider one at the top of the slight ascent. I enlisted the services of a brawny, good-tempered, blue-trousered young quarryman, who landed me in a trice upon the terrace of weather-worn rock, known locally as the Saut (leap) de St. Martin. As I stood facing the gorge, my guide pointed to an oval-shaped, red-edged basin, not a foot in diameter, filled, to within a few inches of the surface, with clear water. "That is St. Martin's Well, Monsieur; it is never empty. And see, here beside it is the mark of his horse's hoofs clear-cut in the rock. Those long marks there were made by the lash of his whip. There are more hoof-prints nearer the edge. He jumped clean across, in one bound. Ma foi! it needed jarrets!" We looked down at the rough-hewn gashes in the limestone. Gold-green mosses, ivy, and warm, red rock plants were creeping out from every cranny of the terrace, where of old the people beset St. Martin. Elderberry bushes trembled in the breeze. "Now look down the valley, Monsieur! There is Nantoux, towards the midi where the rains come from. No rain while the sky is clear there. Come now, and see the view up the valley."