“What have you seen, good man?” asked Mary eagerly, and ready answer was made by the couple, who had acquired some cultivation of speech and manners by their wayside occupation, and likewise as cicerones to the spring.

“Seen, quoth the lady?” said the smith.  “Why, he that is a true man and hath a true maid can quaff a draught as deep as his gullet can hold—­or she that is true and hath a true love—­but let one who hath a flaw in the metal, on the one side or t’other, stoop to drink, and the water shrinks away so as there’s not the moistening of a lip.”

“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.