We now, with the name Sarkeld, craved of their father a direction to that place.  At the door of his but he waved his hand carelessly South for Sarkeld, and vigorously West where the tower stood, then swept both hands up to the tower, bellowed a fire of cannon, waved his hat, and stamped and cheered.  Temple, glancing the way of the tower, performed on a trumpet of his joined fists to show we understood that prodigious attractions were presented by the tower; we said ja and ja, and nevertheless turned into the Sarkeld path.

Some minutes later the sound of hoofs led us to imagine he had despatched a messenger after us.  A little lady on a pony, attended by a tawny-faced great square-shouldered groom on a tall horse, rode past, drew up on one side, and awaited our coming.  She was dressed in a grey riding-habit and a warm winter-jacket of gleaming grey fur, a soft white boa loose round her neck, crossed at her waist, white gauntlets, and a pretty black felt hat with flowing rim and plume.  There she passed as under review.  It was a curious scene:  the iron-faced great-sized groom on his bony black charger dead still:  his mistress, a girl of about eleven or twelve or thirteen, with an arm bowed at her side, whip and reins in one hand, and slips of golden brown hair straying on her flushed cheek; rocks and trees, high silver firs rising behind her, and a slender water that fell from the rocks running at her pony’s feet.  Half-a-dozen yards were between the charger’s head and the pony’s flanks.  She waited for us to march by, without attempting to conceal that we were the objects of her inspection, and we in good easy swing of the feet gave her a look as we lifted our hats.  That look was to me like a net thrown into moonlighted water:  it brought nothing back but broken lights of a miraculous beauty.

Burning to catch an excuse for another look over my shoulder, I heard her voice: 

‘Young English gentlemen!’

We turned sharp round.

It was she without a doubt who had addressed us:  she spurred her pony to meet us, stopped him, and said with the sweetest painful attempt at accuracy in pronouncing a foreign tongue: 

‘I sthink you go a wrong way?’

Our hats flew off again, and bareheaded, I seized the reply before Temple could speak.

‘Is not this, may I ask you, the way to Sarkeld?’

She gathered up her knowledge of English deliberately.

’Yes, one goes to Sarkeld by sthis way here, but to-day goes everybody up to our Bella Vista, and I entreat you do not miss it, for it is some-s-thing to write to your home of.’

’Up at the tower, then?  Oh, we were there last night, and saw the bronze horse, mademoiselle.’

’Yes, I know.  I called on my poor sick woman in a but where you fell asleep, sirs.  Her little ones are my lambs; she has been of our household; she is good; and they said, two young, strange, small gentlemen have gone for Sarkeld; and I supposed, sthey cannot know all go to our Bella Vista to-day.’