I can't have you go through that sun again.' And she pressed on, looking for shade and rest.
But soon she stopped, with a little cry, and they both stood looking in astonishment at the strange and lovely thing upon which they had stumbled unawares.
'I know!' cried Lucy.

'The woman at the convent tried to tell me--and I couldn't understand.

She said we must see the "Sassetto"-- that it was a wonder--and all the strangers thought so.

And it _is_ a wonder! And so cool!' Down from the very brow of the hill, in an age before man was born, the giant force of some primeval convulsion had flung a lava torrent of molten rock to the bed of the Paglia.

And there still was the torrent--a rock-stream composed of huge blocks of basalt--flowing in one vast steep fall, a couple of hundred yards wide, through the forest from top to bottom of the hill.
And very grim and stern would that rock-river have been but for Italy, and the powers of the Italian soil.