Neither Cicely nor Diccon had ever left home before, and they were in raptures which would have made any journey delightful to them, far more a ride through some of the wildest and loveliest glades that England can display.  Nay, it may be that they would better have enjoyed something less like Sheffield Park than the rocks, glens, and woods, through which they rode.  Their real delight was in the towns and villages at which there was a halt, and every traveller they saw was such a wonder to them, that at the end of the first day they were almost as full of exultation in their experiences, as if, with Humfrey, they had been far on the way to America.

The delight of sleeping at Tideswell was in their eyes extreme, though the hostel was so crowded that Cis had to share a mattress with Mrs. Talbot, and Diccon had to sleep in his cloak on the floor, which he persuaded himself was high preferment.  He woke, however, much sooner than was his wont, and finding it useless to try to fall asleep again, he made his way out among the sleeping figures on the floor and hall, and finding the fountain in the midst of the court, produced his soap and comb from his pocket, and made his morning toilet in the open air with considerable satisfaction at his own alertness.  Presently there was a tap at the window above, and he saw Cicely making signals to him to wait for her, and in a few minutes she skipped out from the door into the sunlight of the early summer morning.

“No one is awake yet,” she said.  “Even the guard before the Queen’s door is fast asleep.  I only heard a wench or two stirring.  We can have a run in the fields and gather May dew before any one is afoot.”

“’Tis not May, ’tis June,” said matter-of-fact Diccon.  “But yonder is a guard at the yard gate; will he let us past?”

“See, here’s a little wicket into a garden of pot-herbs,” said Cis.  “No doubt we can get out that way, and it will bring us the sooner into the fields.  I have a cake in my wallet that mother gave me for the journey, so we shall not fast.  How sweet the herbs smell in the dew—­and see how silvery it lies on the strawberry leaves.  Ah! thou naughty lad, think not whether the fruit be ripe.  Mayhap we shall find some wild ones beyond.”

The gate of the garden was likewise guarded, but by a yeoman who well knew the young Talbots, and made no difficulty about letting them out into the broken ground beyond the garden, sloping up into a little hill.  Up bounded the boy and girl, like young mountaineers, through gorse and fern, and presently had gained a sufficient height to look over the country, marking the valleys whence still were rising “fragrant clouds of dewy steam” under the influence of the sunbeams, gazing up at the purple heights of the Peak, where a few lines of snow still lingered in the crevices, trying to track their past journey from their own Sheffield, and with still more interest to guess which wooded valley before them contained Buxton.