Zenobia was to guide the travellers on their way. Blanka laughed with delight as she mounted her horse. At first she found it strange enough to sit astride like a man, but when she saw the stately Wallachian maiden thus mounted, she overcame her scruples and even thought it great fun. The little mountain horses were so steady and sure-footed that it was like being rocked in a cradle to ride one of them.
The two young women rode ahead, while the men lingered behind a moment to drink a stirrup-cup with their host, who would not let them go without observing this ceremony. Entering the forest, Blanka accosted her companion.
"Zenobia, call me 'Blanka,' and speak Hungarian with me. You spoke it well enough in your sleep last night."
The Wallachian girl drew rein abruptly and crossed herself. "Holy Virgin!" she whispered, "don't lisp a word of what you heard me say, and don't ask me about it, either."
They rode on side by side up the slope of the mountain. Blanka was in high spirits. The turf was silvered with hoar frost, except here and there where the direct rays of the sun had melted it and exposed the grass beneath, which looked 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.