The Lady’s Well lay under the shadow of an immense old saugh tree, whose whispering, sighing branches were continually bending down with a kind of graceful melancholy curiosity over the clear spring at its feet. A very narrow strip of path proved that there still came occasional visitors to the little fountain; but the underwood was thick and tangled round it, and the long bramble branches, on which already early berries began to ripen, formed a dangerous network of defence, closing up even the one entrance, which gave admittance to the small circle of green turf surrounding the spring. But there were signs remaining which told of a time when greater honour was paid to the Lady’s Well; for the water bubbled up into a marble basin, and a small carved canopy protected it from the falling leaves. The little girls scrambled through the brambles with eager interest, and Katie bent curiously over the protecting cradle, while Violet sat down upon a great stone, which lay beside the basin--a hewn stone, slightly hollowed out in the centre, as if it had been used as a seat for ages. The stillness of the place, shut in on every side by the surrounding wood, and the silvery tinkle with which the water escaped from the hollowed edge of the basin, and passed away in a slender thread over the bleached pebbles of its narrow channel--away under the thick concealing brushwood, disappearing as completely as though the earth had swallowed it again--affected Lettie with strange awe; and so it was not her, but her little companion, who broke the dreamy silence by demanding from Dragon the story he had promised. “Ye see, bairns,” said Dragon, seating himself on the slender trunk of a young willow, cut down and left there for dead, but which was already throwing out its unquenchable life in long shoots of delicate green, “there was ance a Laird of Allenders, and he had ae only daughter, and her name was Violet. But they never ca’d her Lettie, as they do you, Missie--aye, the full name, like as if she had been a flower; and as bonnie as a flower she was, by a’ accounts, and made ballants and sangs out of her ain head. But, bairns, ye’ll be getting your death of cauld in this dowie place, and then the blame’s sure to come on me.” “But the lady, Dragon--the lady,” exclaimed Violet, whose interest had been greatly quickened by the lady’s name.