of the splintered irregular opening, across which
the clover heads nodded serenely to one another, gave a poignant
anguish to his realization. He tore the rotting planks aside, and
looked as it seemed, down into unrelieved blackness. Then his
sun-dazzled vision adjusted itself to the gloom and he saw the dank,
slime-covered stones that formed the sides of the well, and below the
black gleam of water and something pink and white, that struggled and
went under, and showed again.

"Celia, Celia!" Joel shouted. "Don't be scared. Uncle Joel's coming."

He had been a coward all his life. In his boyhood he had shrunk away
from risks which to Persis were exhilarating and delightful. The ill
health of twenty years had tended to confirm and increase that native
weakness. Yet at this supreme moment no thought of his own danger
crossed his mind, The saving of Celia was all.

He kicked off his slippers and gripping the curb for support, lowered
himself into the pit. A rush of cold air like a breath from an open
grave enveloped him. Finding foothold in the crevices of the green
damp stones, digging his fingers into slimy crannies, panting,
slipping, bruising his flesh without feeling the hurt, this frail
hypochondriac went to the aid of the child who somehow had blundered
into his heart.

The water in the well reached Joel's arm-pits as he stood on its bottom
and lifted Celia to his shoulder. She clung to him for a little with a
suffocating grip, strangling, sobbing, panic-stricken. And as he
strove to soothe her, for the first time fear laid its cold hand upon
him. He looked up to the circle of blue sky so terrifyingly distant
and it seemed incredible that he could ever have made that precipitous
descent. Unencumbered he had accomplished the miracle, but he knew he
could never climb back to the warm peace of the upper air with Celia in
his arms.

The child's sobs were quieting. She was perched upon his shoulder, her
arm wound tightly about his neck. Even at the moment when all the
tragic possibilities of the event crowded on his mind, he felt the
tremor of her rigid little body and thought anxiously that Celia was in
danger of taking cold.

With an effort he took a grip upon realities. Gently he loosened the
pressure of the child's encircling arms.

"Celia, honey, don't hold Uncle Joel so tight. He's got to get breath
enough to holler, so somebody will come and take us out of this."

He had shouted till he