Tell me the cause, dear
father, for I have often wished to know.'
'It passes my experience,' said Herbert; 'but here is an ancient
fisherman; let us inquire of him.'
He was an old man, leaning against a rock, and smoking his pipe in
contemplative silence; his face bronzed with the sun and the roughness
of many seasons, and his grey hairs not hidden by his long blue cap.
Herbert saluted him, and, pointing to the phenomenon, requested an
explanation of it.
''Tis a fountain of fresh water, signor, that rises in our gulf,' said
the old fisherman, 'to the height of twenty feet.'
'And is it constant?' inquired Herbert.
''Tis the same in sunshine and in storm, in summer and in winter, in
calm or in breeze,' said the old fisherman.
'And has it always been so?'
'It came before my time.'
'A philosophic answer,' said Herbert, 'and deserves a paul. Mine was a
crude question. Adio, good friend.'
'I should like to drink of that fountain of fresh water, Annabel,'
said Herbert. 'There seems to me something wondrous fanciful in it.
Some day we will row there. It shall be a calm like this.'
'We want a fountain in our valley,' said Lady Annabel.
'We do,' said Herbert; 'and I think we must make one; we must inquire
at Genoa. I am curious in fountains.
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