s contrived, in which Cicely was summoned again
to tell her tale. The ladies declared they had always hoped much from
their darling page, in whom they had kept up the true faith, but Sir
Andrew Melville shook his head and said: "I'd misdoot ony plot where
the little finger of him was. What garred the silly loon call in the
young leddy ere he kenned whether she wad keep counsel?"

CHAPTER XVII.

THE EBBING WELL.

Cicely's thirst for adventures had received a check, but the Queen,
being particularly well and in good spirits, and trusting that this
would be her last visit to Buxton, was inclined to enterprise, and
there were long rides and hawking expeditions on the moors.

The last of these, ere leaving Buxton, brought the party to the hamlet
of Barton Clough, where a loose horseshoe of the Earl's caused a halt
at a little wayside smithy. Mary, always friendly and free-spoken,
asked for a draught of water, and entered into conversation with the
smith's rosy-cheeked wife who brought it to her, and said it was sure
to be good and pure for the stream came from the Ebbing and Flowing
Well, and she pointed up a steep path. Then, on a further question,
she proceeded, "Has her ladyship never heard of the Ebbing Well that
shows whether true love is soothfast?"

"How so?" asked the Queen. "How precious such a test might be. It
would save many a maiden a broken heart, only that the poor fools would
ne'er trust it."

"I have heard of it," said the Earl, "and Dr. Jones would demonstrate
to your Grace that it is but a superstition of the vulgar regarding a
natural phenomenon."

"Yea, my Lord," said the smith, looking up from the horse's foot; "'tis
the trade of yonder philosophers to gainsay whatever honest folk
believed before them. They'll deny next that hens lay eggs, or blight
rots wheat. My good wife speaks but plain truth, and we have seen it
o'er and o'er again."

"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 moisten