f, 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.

"Have you lost your way, my pretty mistress?" said a voice close to
them, and turni