ked all the greener by contrast. A stately grove
received the travellers. A silence as of some high-arched cathedral
reigned, broken occasionally by the antiphony of feathered songsters in
the trees overhead. A pair of wild peacocks started up at the riders'
approach and alighted again at a little distance. The ascent became
steeper. Horses bred in the lowlands must have long since succumbed to
the strain put upon them, but Aaron's good mountain ponies showed not
even a drop of sweat on their sleek coats.

Gaining the mountain top at length, the travellers saw before them a
wild moor threaded by a narrow path, which they were obliged to follow
in single file, Zenobia taking the lead. The sun was high in the heavens
when they reached the end of this tortuous path and found themselves at
a point where their road led downward into the valley below. A venerable
beech-tree, perhaps centuries old, marked this spot. It was the sole
survivor of the primeval forest that had once crowned the height on
which it stood. Held firm by its great, wide-reaching roots, which
fastened themselves in the crannies of the rock, it had thus far defied
the elements. Its trunk half hid a cavernous opening in the
mountainside, before which lay a large stone basin partly filled with
water.

"Here we will rest awhile, beside the Wonder Spring," said Zenobia,
leaping from her horse and loosening her saddle-girth. "We'll take a
bite of lunch and let our animals graze; then later we will water them."

"How can we?" asked Blanka. "There is scarcely any water here."

"There will be enough before long," was the reply. "That is why we call
it the Wonder Spring: every two hours it gushes out, and then subsides
again."

Blanka shook her head doubtfully, and, as if to make the most of the
water still remaining in the basin, she used her hand as a ladle and
dipped up enough to quench the thirst of her pair of fowls--for her
valuable present had not been left behind.

Meanwhile Aaron had spread the lunch on the green table-cloth provided
by good dame Nature, and had begun to cut, with his silver-mounted
clasp-knife, a generous portion for each traveller. But Blanka declared
herself less hungry than thirsty.

"The saints have but to wish, and their desires are fulfilled," was
Zenobia's laughing rejoinder. "Even the barren rocks yield nectar. Hear
that! The spring is going to flow in a moment."

A gurgling sound was heard from the cavernous opening behi