The well should be digged forthwith, and what
Geoffrey Purcill once resolved upon he was not slow to execute; and,
despite the remonstrances of those who knew better than he, the work
was commenced at once.

A more unpromising place for a well could not have been selected in all
his extensive grounds; but he was not a man to be patiently baffled
even by Nature herself, and he stood looking with grim satisfaction at
the hole which rapidly widened and deepened under the vigorous efforts
of his sturdy workmen.

Day after day old Geoffrey watched his workmen on the knoll. The well
increased in size till it was large enough to have watered a whole
caravan,--but the desert of Sahara itself was not drier. Geoffrey
fumed, raved, and swore; and when two of the men were killed by the
falling of the earth, and the rest absolutely refused to work any
longer, he bade them go, a pack of ungrateful scoundrels as they were,
and, procuring more laborers, declared "he would dig there till the
Devil came to fetch him."

Geoffrey was as good as his word;--he labored with a pertinacity worthy
of a better object, and dug deeper into the bowels of the earth, and
partly stoned his well,--but no water, save that which fell from
heaven, ever appeared in it.

And when old Geoffrey was gathered to his fathers, he left his house
and grounds to his only daughter, Eleanor Purcill, on the express
condition that the well was not to be filled up, but to remain open
till water did come into it.

* * * * *

One July day, when Geoffrey Purcill had been some twenty years with his
fathers, or with Satan, (which two destinies might have been one and
the same, after all, for he came of a turbulent, wicked race,) two
children, a boy and girl, sat on the brink of the well and looked down
into it. It was half filled with the rubbish of the fallen stones, but
it was still deep, and dark enough to tempt their curious eyes into
trying to discover what lay hidden in its shadowy depths. The great
chestnut-tree, rich with drooping, feathery blossoms, shaded them from
the burning sun,--a few stray beams only finding their way through the
glossy leaves, and resting on the golden curls of the girl.

The boy leaned over the well, and peered into it;--the little girl bent
forward, as if to do the same, but drew back again.

"Take hold of my hand, Mark," said she, "and let me lean over as you
do."

"What do you want to look in for?