Thus they made merry near the well, with its queer square stones built into pillars to hold up the roof.
"Poor Ponce de Leon," sighed Ruth. "How disappointed he must have been when he found out that his life was slipping away in spite of the Fountain of Youth. I wonder if he really believed he had found it?"
"He couldn't have—when he came to die," remarked Russ, practically.
"But it is a pretty story," Ruth said, softly. "Poor Ponce de Leon!"
"The Indians told him this was the fountain," said Paul, who had been reading history. "Near this fountain was found a large coquina cross. The cross was located by the discovery of a silver casque, which contained documents telling of the matter, and one seems to fix the date of the first visit of Ponce de Leon to Florida. That was in 1513, according to the documents found in the casque.
"Am I boring you?" he asked quickly, for he thought the two former vaudeville actresses looked as though they wanted to talk of something else besides dry historical facts.
"No, indeed!" cried Alice. "I just love to hear about this."
"Do go on," urged Ruth, and even Miss Pennington condescended to say:
"It sounds interesting."
"I'll read you what one of the old documents said," went on Paul. "'As we bore down upon him we found him to be an Indian, in a skin boat with a skin sail, running to a point twenty feet in the air, with a bow at the top. In the boat, which I describe in my descriptive image, I went ashore with the Indian. We landed near a spring that they call the Fountain of Youth; there they had a temple built where they worshipped the sun, and there I built a cross out of coquina, which is a natural formation of the sea, and I laid it with the rising and setting sun. In the heart of the cross I placed a descriptive image of myself, and took possession in the name of our beloved Catholic King.'