and in a moment after I was draining icy
nectar from the cup, for which I had risked so much. Yet all I could do
when I got it, was only to sip a little, and let the rest run back again
into the well. While like the refrain of a weary song, over and over the
words ran in his mind, "O that one would give me--of the water of the
Well of Bethlehem--that is beside the Gate."

Then, like a far-away voice calling one out of a dream, I heard the
sound of the sentry returning to his post. Quite clearly I discerned him
lifting his musket, shifting it from one side to the other, and so
resuming his equal tramp. I heard everything, indeed, with a kind of
acuteness beyond the natural. Yet all the while I was strangely without
sense of danger. I thought how excellent a jest it would be, to shout
out suddenly when the soldier came near, to see him jump; and but for
the remembrance of my mother, I protest I had done it.

So there I lay on the margin of the well, just as at the first I had
flung myself down, without so much as troubling thoroughly to shut the
door. I am sure that from the corner where the sentry turned, he might
have seen my boot-heel every time, had he but troubled to peep round the
door. But he had been so often within the well-house during his time on
guard, that he never once glanced my way. Also he was evidently elevated
by what he had gotten within the house from the serving maid, whatever
that might have been.

It was strange to hear his step alternately faint and loud as he came
and went. He paced from the well-house to the great gate, and from
thence to the corner of the tower. Back again he came, to-and-fro like
the pendulum of a clock. Once he took the butt of his musket and gave
the door, within which I lay, a sharp fling to. Luckily it opened from
without, so that the hasp caught as it came and I was shut within.

So there I lay without power to move all that day, and no one came near
me till late in the gloaming. For it was the custom at the Earlstoun to
draw the water for the day in the early morning, and that for the night
uses when the horses were suppered at bed-time. Sometimes my head seemed
to swell to so great a size, that it filled the well-house and was
pressed against the roof. Anon, to my thinking, it grew wizzened and
small, waxing and waning as I sickened and the shoots of pain ran round
my brows.

At last I heard feet patter slowly down the turret stair and out at the
door. Through the