The sweet carillon of the cathedral bells, pealing forth the quarters, warned the people that midnight was drawing nigh, and gradually the throng began to disperse. Imitating their example my uncle and I directed our footsteps homewards. Groups of peasants and shepherds passed us on the way, some singing gaily, others winding with their horns the melodious "_Ranz des Vaches_." As we turned to quit the road for the mountain-path, the cathedral bell chimed the first stroke of midnight. "Twelve o'clock!" exclaimed my uncle in a deep, tragic voice. "Now is the time when elves and fairies trip it on the greensward, and spirits rise from yon haunted well. Come, let us sit by it for a time and enjoy the ghostly revels. It is an affront to Nature to sleep on such a night as this." Slowly the silver tongue from the belfry continued to toll forth the chimes with a solemn little interval between each. As the twelfth stroke died gently away, a peculiar sound, muffled by the distance, was wafted to my ears, seeming to my quickened fancy like the cry of a woman. Whence the sound proceeded I could not tell. It might have come from the north; it might have come from the south. "Did you hear it?" I said. "Hear what?" "A sound like a woman's scream." We both listened for a few moments, but the sound, whatever it was, was not repeated. "Your fancy," my uncle remarked with a smile. "In such a place as this you will hear many ghostly cries, if you give your imagination rein. But don't let us turn in just yet. I've some good news for you." Wondering a good deal what the news would be, I followed him to the fountain. He found a seat on a mossy boulder close to the stone-work of the well, and leaning back against the trunk of a tree, proceeded to light a fresh cigar, as an indispensable aid to reflection. The moon was now at its zenith, riding through a veil of light fleecy clouds. Around us at the distance of a furlong towered an amphitheatre of rocks, and the jagged edges of this cliff sharply defined against the deep violet sky exhibited crags of fantastic shape like the towers and pinnacles of some genie's castle. It required but small aid from fancy to believe that the blast of a horn startling the midnight air would summon to these crags beings as wild and unearthly as ever crowded the haunted Brocken on a Walpurgis-night. No more appropriate scene could be imagined for the revelry of demons and witches. The solemn hour and the wild legends connected with the spring contributed to invest the place with an atmosphere of mystery. The trees whispered secrets to each other: the waters rippled with a cold and ghostly sparkle. In the distance foaming waterfalls standing out in relief against a background of dark rocks glimmered like waving white-robed spirits with a never-ceasing murmur. The air seemed alive with the mystic "tongues that syllable men's names on sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses."