Immersed in such disjointed musings, I had journeyed on I know not how long, when all at once I became conscious, so to speak, of the outward world, and looked up and on all sides of me. Where was I? In no place certainly that I had ever visited before. The sea was nowhere visible; the surface of the ground was rocky and irregular, and in nearly every direction the view was shut in by thick growths of pine, birch, and oak. From beyond a clump of the latter, southward from where I stood, I thought I detected the noise of falling water; and glancing eastwards, I could trace the course of a stream which was itself unseen, by the hedge of stunted timber that fringed its banks. The aspect of the neighbourhood was wild and remote; it seemed to lie apart from men's ways; and certainly he would have been an unsocial spirit who should have chosen such a spot to live in. On the other hand, anyone in search of a good place to do a murder in, or hold a witch meeting, need not have looked farther. A corpse might lie amongst these rocks and bushes for twenty years without a chance of being discovered; and ghost and witches might scream their eeriest unheard by mortal ear. Meanwhile I walked on to the other side of the clump of oak trees, when I suddenly found myself gazing on a scene that involuntarily brought me to a standstill. V. I was now standing on the bank of a stream which, coming from the west, took its course past my feet eastwards. For some distance its approach was between gradually rising walls of rock, which were highest just where I stood. Thence was a precipitous descent into a small gorge about one hundred paces in length, whose steep sides opened out towards the east, their meeting-point being my present station. Through the natural gateway which it had cut for itself in the face of the precipice, the stream fell cataract-wise into a deep pool below, whence overflowing it rushed down a rugged incline, and, having leapt another fall, raced along the middle of the little glen, and so hurried with foam and noise onward to the sea. There were vestiges of a rude bridge, long since broken down, across the natural gateway just mentioned; and I even fancied that I could detect traces of an ancient footpath which had its beginning somewhere in the west, and, crossing the stream at this point, had then clambered down the slope to the bottom of the gorge. The bridge had not been entirely of stone; but a stout plank had probably spanned the flood, secured at either end by rough masonry. It must have been a ticklish passage without a handrail, for a false step, followed by a plunge over the cataract, would have been almost certain death. If Master Peter had tumbled in here instead of at the other pool miles lower down, not Poyntz, nor Agatha, nor I, nor all the luck in the world could have got him out alive.