Some such places, whether springs or caves, have, as might be expected, attained greater fame or notoriety than others; some special incident starts a story about them which from generation to generation rolls on gathering it may be fresh volume. A typical story--typical save only for the absence of tragedy, since the Naiads are wont to drown by mistake those whom they carry off--was heard by Leo Allatius[405] from what he considered a trustworthy source. ‘Some well-to-do people of Chios were taking a summer holiday in the country _en famille_, when a pretty little girl of the party got separated from the rest and ran off to a well at a little distance. Amusing herself, as children will, she leant forward over the well, and as she was looking at the water in it, was, without perceiving it, insensibly lifted by some force and pushed into the well. Her relations saw her carried off, and running up, perceived the girl amusing herself on the top of the water as if she were seated on a bed. Thereupon her father, emboldened by the sight, tried to climb down into the well, but was pulled in by some force and set beside his child. In the meantime some of the others had brought a ladder, which they lowered into the well and bade the man ascend. Catching up his daughter in his arms, he mounted the ladder safe and sound, and to the amazement of all, though father and daughter had been all that time in the water, they came out with clothes perfectly dry, without so much as a trace of dampness. The seizure of the girl and her father they attributed to Nereids, who were said to haunt that well. The girl too herself asserted that while she was hanging over the well, she had seen women sporting on the surface of the water with the utmost animation, and at their invitation had voluntarily thrown herself in.’ This story, though it ends happily, bears a marked resemblance to that of Hylas. It is specially noted that the child had a pretty face, and this without doubt is conceived as impelling the Nereids to seize her. It is of little consequence that their home is, in this case, a mere well instead of ‘a spring,’ as Theocritus[406] pictures it, ‘in a hollow of the land, whereabout grew rushes thickly and purple cuckoo-flower[407] and pale maidenhair and bright green parsley and clover spreading wide’; for the ancients also attributed nymphs to their wells[408]. Such stories are sometimes causes, sometimes effects, of the not uncommon place-names νεραϊδόβρυσι, νεραϊδόσπηλῃ͜ο[409], ‘Nereid-spring,’ ‘Nereid-cave.’