“Did you ever see so monstrous a web!” Leoncia exclaimed.
“I’d like to see the monster that made it,” said Henry.
“And I’d rather see than be it,” Francis paraphrased from the “Purple Cow.”
“It is our good fortune that we do not have to go that way,” the Queen said.
All looked inquiry at her, and she pointed down to the stream.
“That is the way,” she said. “I know it. Often and often, in my Mirror of the World, have I seen the way. When my mother died and was buried in the whirlpool, I followed her body in the Mirror, and I saw it come to this place and go by this place still in the water.”
“But she was dead,” Leoncia objected quickly.
The rivalry between them fanned instantly.
“One of my spearmen,” the Queen went on quietly, “a handsome youth, alas, dared to look at me as a lover. He was flung in alive. I watched him, too, in the Mirror. When he came to this place he climbed out. I saw him crawl under the web to the day, and I saw him retreat backward from the day and throw himself into the stream.”
“Another dead one,” Henry commented grimly.