hi!" he cried below. "Are you all right?"

A moment of intense silence--a moment which seemed interminable to the
boy clinging to the handle of the windlass; then, to his great relief,
the voice of Paul came faintly up the well:

"All right! But--but it's been a near thing!"

"Hold tight. I'm going to haul you up!"

Slowly he hauled Paul to the top of the well; and, with an
inexpressible feeling of thankfulness, Paul stepped from the bucket.

"Have they gone?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes. A near thing, you said; what happened?"

"You just stopped me within about a foot of the water, and the sudden
jerk nearly pitched me out of the bucket. The scoundrels have gone, you
say?"

"Yes," smiled Wyndham; "they've gone in hot pursuit of you. They little
dreamt you were down that well! You couldn't have had a better
hiding-place."

"Better! Well, perhaps you're right; but it was a bit musty and
uncomfortable! I'm much obliged to you, all the same. You seem a decent
fellow, though you are a Beetle!"

Beetle was the nickname given by the Garside boys to the boys of St.
Bede's.

Wyndham laughed. Paul glanced round the melancholy, deserted ruin. He
could see no sign of human habitation.

"And you seem a decent fellow, though you are a Gargoyle." (Gargoyle was
the nickname given by the St. Bede boys to the boys of Garside School.)
"What's your name?"

"Paul Percival. I have often seen you amongst the other Beetles; but you
don't live about here, do you?"

"Not now." And there was a deep note of melancholy in Wyndham's voice.
"You can see, it's a ruin; but before it was a ruin I lived here with my
mother and youngest brother, Archie. He's gone--now."

"Gone?"

Wyndham nodded, and Paul understood too well what "gone" meant.
Wyndham's brother was dead; but he wondered what his death could have to
do with the ruined house. There was a painful silence between them for
some moments.

"I think you said you were going to Redmead?"

"Yes; Oakville, that's the house I want."

"I know it. Mr. Moncrief lives there. He's a big man at Chatham
Dockyard, and has a lot to do with the defences of the Medway and the
Thames, so I've heard. He designs things, too, for the Admiralty. I'm
going partly that way if you don't mind walking with a Beetle."

Paul laughed, and remarked that he could put up for once with a Beetle
if the Beetle could put up with a Gargoyle.

So they started together, and Wyndham told Paul by the way the reas