had
heard was the horn of Persis' car. She had returned. And the love of
life woke in him and gave him strength to scream lustily again and
again.

As the children scrambled out upon the grass, all talking at once,
Persis lifted an authoritative hand. "Hush! I thought I heard some
one call."

"I don't hear nothing, Miss Dale," said Mary tranquilly. Persis again
enjoined silence. As her gaze swept uneasily over the peaceful,
familiar scene, her eyes were arrested by one of the rotting boards
which had formed the cover of the unused well.

Joel, wrenching it from its place, had flung it out into the clover.
It had not been there that morning, Persis knew.

She ran toward it with a conviction of calamity which only took
concrete form when she heard her brother's call issuing from the depths
of the earth.

"The well," she cried with self-accusing anguish. "The old well." But
when she stood by its edge and sent her voice ringing down into its
depth, it was steady and strong.

"I'm going for help, Joel. 'Twon't be much of any time now. Just a
little longer."

Mary and the children had never seen the Persis who came running toward
them. They shrank back from her stern presence, half afraid.

"Mary, take the children into the house and keep them there. Call up
the doctor and tell him to get here as quick as he can. And have that
coil of new rope that's in the shed ready for me by the time I'm back."

She had leaped into the machine while she was giving her orders. It
described a dizzy circle in the grass, shot down the driveway, and sped
screaming along the dusty road. Before the trembling Mary had had more
than time to discharge her commissions the car was back with half a
dozen strong men, harvesters from the farm just below, crowded into the
seats. And when Doctor Ballard turned his sweating horse up the drive
half an hour later, Joel and Celia were between hot blankets, and
stimulants had already stirred their sluggish blood.

It was eight o'clock before the doctor left. "I've got to see the
Packard boy, or I wouldn't go. I'll come back and stay the night
through."

Persis nodded. "I'd feel easier to have you in the house. There won't
be no need for you to lose your sleep. The spare room's all made up."

Some twenty minutes later Joel roused and spoke. His respiration was
hurried and articulation difficult.

"Persis--Celia?"

She understood the syncopated sentence.

"Celia's doing