dustry, he had made a sort of new map
of the place; and had decided beyond doubt that some person or persons
had so strayed, for some purpose, in several defined directions. There
was a way burst through the bushes, making a short cut across a loop
of the wandering path; there was another forking out from it as an
alternative way into the central space. But there was one especially
which was unique, and which seemed to him, the more he studied it, to
point to some essential of the mystery.

One of these beaten and broken tracks went from the space under the
peacock trees outward into the wood for about twenty yards and then
stopped. Beyond that point not a twig was broken nor a leaf disturbed.
It had no exit, but he could not believe that it had no goal. After some
further reflection, he knelt down and began to cut away grass and clay
with his knife, and was surprised at the ease with which they detached
themselves. In a few moments a whole section of the soil lifted like a
lid; it was a round lid and presented a quaint appearance, like a flat
cap with green feathers. For though the disc itself was made of wood,
there was a layer of earth on it with the live grass still growing
there. And the removal of the round lid revealed a round hole, black as
night and seemingly bottomless. Paynter understood it instantly. It was
rather near the sea for a well to be sunk, but the traveler had known
wells sunk even nearer. He rose to his feet with the great knife in his
hand, a frown on his face, and his doubts resolved. He no longer shrank
from naming what he knew. This was not the first corpse that had been
thrown down a well; here, without stone or epitaph, was the grave of
Squire Vane. In a flash all the mythological follies about saints and
peacocks were forgotten; he was knocked on the head, as with a stone
club, by the human common sense of crime.

Cyprian Paynter stood long by the well in the wood, walked round it in
meditation, examined its rim and the ring of grass about it, searched
the surrounding soil thoroughly, came back and stood beside the well
once more. His researches and reflections had been so long that he had
not realized that the day had passed and that the wood and the world
round it were beginning already to be steeped in the enrichment of
evening. The day had been radiantly calm; the sea seemed to be as still
as the well, and the well was as still as a mirror. And then, quite
without warning, the mirror m