ing 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 st