The way to the ruin wound round the slope of a wooded valley, at whose bottom a brook flowed noisily over its pebbles as if it were anxious to lose itself in the great stream that was shining peacefully behind the sharply indented mountain side. Gagin called my attention to some partially lighted spots; in his words the artist certainly spoke, if not the painter. The river soon appeared. On the summit of the naked rock rose a square town, black with age but in tolerable preservation, though it was cleft from top to bottom. Moss-grown walls adjoined this town, ivy clung here and there, a tangle of briars filled the embrasures and the shattered arches. A stone foot-walk led to the door that remained intact. We were already near it when suddenly a girl's figure sped by us, sprang over the heaps of rubbish, and seated herself on a projection of the wall directly over the abyss. "There is Assja," cried Gagin. "Is she mad?" Through the gate we stepped into a spacious courtyard half filled with wild apple trees and stinging nettles. It was indeed Assja, who was sitting on the projection. She looked down at us and laughed, but did not stir from her place. Gagin threatened her with his finger. I began to expostulate aloud with her on her recklessness. "Don't do that," Gagin whispered to me. "Don't exasperate her. You don't know her. She would be capable of clambering up the town. Look yonder, rather, and see how ingenious the people hereabouts are." I looked about me. A thrifty old lady had made herself very comfortable in a kind of narrow booth made of boards piled up in one corner, and knitted her stocking, while she occasionally glanced askance at us. She had beer, cake, and soda-water for tourists. We sat down on a bench and attacked our heavy tin mugs of cooling beer. Assja still sat motionless; she had drawn up her feet, and wound her muslin scarf about her head. Her charming, slender figure showed sharp against the sky, but I could not look at it without annoyance. Even on the previous day I had seen something intense, unnatural in her. "Does she want to astonish us?" I thought. "What for? What a childish freak!" As if she had fathomed my thought, she cast a quick and piercing glance at me, laughed loudly, sprang in two bounds from the wall, and going to the old woman, asked for a glass of water. "You think that I want to drink it?" she said, turning to her brother. "No; there are some flowers up there that I must water." Gagin made no reply, but she scrambled up the ruins glass in hand, and, stopping from time to time and bending down, with extraordinary painstaking she let fall some drops of water, which glistened in the sun. Her movements were full of grace, but I was vexed as before, although I was forced to admire her lightness and dexterity. In one perilous spot she uttered a little shriek with design, and then laughed loudly again. That annoyed me still more.