"You are not far from them," replied Captain Delaware--for Blanche's eyes were fixed upon the ground, and her thoughts were--not at Nova Zembla. "But surely you are not tired?"
"Nay, nay, any thing but tired?" answered Burrel; "but your father declared he would catechise me upon these ruins severely, and I was only afraid that I should forget them altogether."
"A piece of inattention which Blanche or I would excuse much more readily than my father," replied the good-humored sailor. "But we are close upon them. You see those two wooded banks that fall across each other, with the stream flowing out in foam from between them? They form the mouth of a little glen, about a hundred yards up which stands the Prior's Fountain, and farther still, the Hermit's Chapel. In architecture, I believe, they are unique, and there is many a curious tradition about both."
"Hush, hush, William!" cried his sister, seeing him about to proceed, "never tell the traditions but upon the spot. Oh, an old legend, in these days of steam and manufactory, can never be properly told, except under the gray stone and the ivy, where the memories of a thousand years are carved by the chisel of time on every tottering pinnacle and moldering cornice, which vouch, by their unusual forms, for the strange stories of their founders!"
"Oh, let us go on, by all means," said Burrel, smiling; "an old legend is worthy of every accessory with which we can furnish it. But there it is," he added, as they turned the angle of the bank, and, entering the little glen, had before them a small Gothic building, covered with the richest ornaments of the most luxurious age of Norman architecture. "That, I suppose, is the chapel?"
"No, that is the Prior's Fountain," answered Captain Delaware; "and certainly the monks must have attached some peculiar importance to it, from covering it over with so splendid a structure."
Another minute brought them near it, and Burrel found that, under a beautiful canopy of stone-work, supported by eight cluster pillars, was placed a small stone fountain, full of the most limpid water, which, welling from a basin somewhat like the baptismal font of a Gothic church, poured through a little channel in the pavement, and thence made a small, sparkling stream, which joined the larger one ere it had run fifty yards. Attached to the basin by an iron chain, was a cup of the same metal, of very ancient date, though, perhaps, more modern than the fountain. This cup, as soon as they approached, Captain Delaware dipped into the water, and, laughing gayly, held it to Burrel.
"You must drink of the Prior's Fountain, Mr. Burrel," he said; "but listen, listen before you do so. The monks, you know, having vowed celibacy, found that the less they had to do with love the better; and it being luckily discovered that the waters of this well were a complete and everlasting cure for that malady, one of the priors covered it over, as you see, and enjoined that, on commencing his novitiate at Emberton, every pseudo-monk should be brought hither, and made to drink one cup of the water. It is added, that the remedy was never known to fail; and now, with this warning, Burrel, drink if you will."
Burrel, by this time, had the cup in his hand, and for a single instant his eyes sought those of Blanche Delaware. She was looking down into the fountain, with one hand resting on the edge. There was a slight smile upon her lip, but there was a scarcely perceptible degree of agitation in her aspect at the same time, which Burrel understood--or, at least, hoped--might have some reference to himself, although she might believe as little as he did in the efficacy of the waters of the fountain.
"No, no!" he replied at once, giving back the cup to Captain Delaware, and laughing lightly, as people do when they have very serious feelings at their hearts--"no, no! I dare not drink of such waters--they are too cold, in every sense of the word, to drink after such a walk as this. The very cup has frozen my hand!" he added, to take out any point that he might have given to his speech.