"Ay: the ladies may laugh," added his wife, "but 'tis soothfast for all that."
"Hast proved it, good dame?" asked the Queen archly, for the pair were still young and well-looking enough to be jested with.
"Ay! have we not, madam?" said the dame. "Was not my man yonder, Rob, the tinker's son, whom my father and brethren, the smiths down yonder at Buxton, thought but scorn of, but we'd taken a sup together at the Ebbing Well, and it played neither of us false, so we held out against 'em all, and when they saw there was no help for it, they gave Bob the second best anvil and bellows for my portion, and here we be."
"Living witnesses to the Well," said the Queen merrily. "How say you, my Lord? I would fain see this marvel. Master Curll, will you try the venture?"
"I fear it not, madam," said the secretary, looking at the blushing Barbara.
Objections did not fail to arise from the Earl as to the difficulties of the path and the lateness of the hour but Bob Smith, perhaps wilfully, discovered another of my Lord's horseshoes to be in a perilous state, and his good wife, Dame Emmott, offered to conduct the ladies by so good a path that they might think themselves on the Queen's Walk at Buxton itself.
Lord Shrewsbury, finding himself a prisoner, was obliged to yield compliance, and leaving Sir Andrew Melville, with the grooms and falconers, in charge of the horses, the Queen, the Earl, Cicely, Mary Seaton, Barbara Mowbray, the two secretaries, and Richard Talbot and young Diccon, started on the walk, together with Dr. Bourgoin, her physician, who was eager to investigate the curiosity, and make it a subject of debate with Dr. Jones.
The path was a beautiful one, through rocks and brushwood, mountain ash bushes showing their coral berries amid their feathery leaves, golden and white stars of stonecrop studding every coign of vantage, and in more level spots the waxy bell-heather beginning to come into blossom. Still it was rather over praise to call it as smooth as the carefully-levelled and much-trodden Queen's path at Buxton, considering that it ascended steeply all the way, and made the solemn, much-enduring Earl pant for breath; but the Queen, her rheumatics for the time entirely in abeyance, bounded on with the mountain step learned in early childhood, and closely followed the brisk Emmott. The last ascent was a steep pull, taking away the disposition to speak, and at its summit Mary stood still holding out one hand, with a finger of the other on her lips as a sign of silence to the rest of the suite and to Emmott, who stood flushed and angered; for what she esteemed her lawful province seemed to have been invaded from the other side of the country.
They were on the side of the descent from the moorlands connected with the Peak, on a small esplanade in the midst of which lay a deep clear pool, with nine small springs or fountains discharging themselves, under fern and wild rose or honeysuckle, into its basin. Steps bad been cut in the rock leading to the verge of the pool, and on the lowest of these, with his back to the new-comers, was kneeling a young man, his brown head bare, his short cloak laid aside, so that his well-knit form could be seen; the sword and spurs that clanked against the rock, as well as the whole fashion and texture of his riding-dress, showing him to be a gentleman.
"We shall see the venture made," whispered Mary to her daughter, who, in virtue of youth and lightness of foot, had kept close behind her. Grasping the girl's arm and smiling, she heard the young man's voice cry aloud to the echoes of the rock, "Cis!" then stoop forward and plunge face and head into the clear translucent water.