“‘Have you any food, mother,’ said the lad, ‘food fit to offer such worshipful gentlemen?’
“‘Scarcely is it fit, brother,’ said the gipsy woman. ‘I have here bread, and a little wine, and one cup only in which to serve it.’
“‘If I had known you camped here, sister,’ said the boy, ‘and if you had no man to see that all is well with you and the child, I could have set snares in the fern, and you would have supped better.’
“‘I know it,’ she answered. ‘Had I asked it of you, you would have set snares for these little children. Nay, then, brother, you would have shared all you trapped till you went supperless yourself. Therefore you shall eat of my bread and drink the wine I have to give. Cross the water to me.’
“‘But these good gentlemen, mother?’ asked the boy.
“‘They may take you by the hand,’ she said, ‘and cross the water to me.’
“‘I do not think they can tread a path so narrow as this rock. It is slippery. Sister, I will cross and bring to them what you have of food and drink, and fire that we may build a fire by the stone.’
“‘You may take them fire,’ she answered, ‘but for food and drink they must cross to me. They cannot walk with your feet; they must use their own. They must cross barefoot, or they will fall into the pool.’
“After a while the man who ruled this little northern village determined to cross; he was hungry, and preferred the scantiest fare to fasting; besides he saw the cross on the ruined altar, and he desired to enter the chapel and pray. The preacher demurred at the depth of the cold still water; the chapel was a former place of Popish worship, the cross on the altar offended him, and he was not yet very hungry, besides he had a little food still in his wallet. He tethered the horses and sat down to eat, while his two companions crept, hand in hand, inch by inch over the narrow rock path that was just visible above the shifting shimmer of the pool’s surface.
“Entering the chapel they sat side by side on the broken pavement. The woman, sitting beside the fire, broke her cakes of bread; she gave them each a portion, and ate some herself; she drank from the cup and handed it to them.