They were on the side of the descent from the moorlands connected with the Peak, on a small esplanade in the midst of which lay a deep clear pool, with nine small springs or fountains discharging themselves, under fern and wild rose or honeysuckle, into its basin.  Steps bad been cut in the rock leading to the verge of the pool, and on the lowest of these, with his back to the new-comers, was kneeling a young man, his brown head bare, his short cloak laid aside, so that his well-knit form could be seen; the sword and spurs that clanked against the rock, as well as the whole fashion and texture of his riding-dress, showing him to be a gentleman.

“We shall see the venture made,” whispered Mary to her daughter, who, in virtue of youth and lightness of foot, had kept close behind her.  Grasping the girl’s arm and smiling, she heard the young man’s voice cry aloud to the echoes of the rock, “Cis!” then stoop forward and plunge face and head into the clear translucent water.

“Good luck to a true lover!” smiled the Queen.  “What! starting, silly maid?  Cisses are plenty in these parts as rowan berries.”

“Nay, but—­” gasped Cicely, for at that moment the young man, rising from his knees, his face still shining with the water, looked up at his unsuspected spectators.  An expression of astonishment and ecstasy lighted up his honest sunburnt countenance as Master Richard, who had just succeeded in dragging the portly Earl up the steep path, met his gaze.  He threw up his arms, made apparently but one bound, and was kneeling at the captain’s feet, embracing his knees.

“My son!  Humfrey!  Thyself!” cried Richard.  “See! see what presence we are in.”

“Your blessing, father, first,” cried Humfrey, “ere I can see aught else.”

And as Richard quickly and thankfully laid his hand on the brow, so much fairer than the face, and then held his son for one moment in a close embrace, with an exchange of the kiss that was not then only a foreign fashion.  Queen and Earl said to one another with a sigh, that happy was the household where the son had no eyes for any save his father.

Mary, however, must have found it hard to continue her smiles when, after due but hurried obeisance to her and to his feudal chief, Humfrey turned to the little figure beside her, all smiling with startled shyness, and in one moment seemed to swallow it up in a huge overpowering embrace, fraternal in the eyes of almost all the spectators, but not by any means so to those of Mary, especially after the name she had heard.  Diccon’s greeting was the next, and was not quite so visibly rapturous on the part of the elder brother, who explained that he had arrived at Sheffield yesterday, and finding no one to welcome him but little Edward, had set forth for Buxton almost with daylight, and having found himself obliged to rest his horse, he had turned aside to—–.  And here he recollected just in time that Cis was