box-like enclosure. How
cooling the grass was to his feet as on tip-toes peeking over the top of
the enclosure down into that which seemed to his childish imagination a
fathomless abyss, so deep that ray of sun or glint of moon never
penetrated to the surface of the water. The clanging of the chain, the
grinding of the heavy bucket bumping against the walled circle as it
descended, and the splash as it struck the water, were uncanny sounds to
the boy's ears. The desire to look down, down into the old well's hidden
secrets became to him almost a frenzy. The echoes coming up from its
shadowy depths were as those of a haunted glen.

He reasoned that all men and women were created to guard the well and
that it was his only duty in life to thwart them.

Balmy spring, with its song birds, buzzing bees and sweet-smelling
blossoms, coaxed every living thing out of doors; everything, except the
First Born and his guards.

Such was the situation when the bees swarmed. The guards "pricked up
their ears," then, with eyes looking heavenward, and snatching up tin
pans which they beat with spoons, sleigh-bells and other objects, they
rushed from the kitchen to work the usual charm of the country folk in
settling the swarming bees.

Thus unguarded, the little prisoner, carrying a three-legged stool that
aided him in surmounting the bar across the kitchen door, trekked for
the old well. Planting the stool at one side of the square enclosure, he
looked down into the cavernous depths; leaning far over, reached for the
chain, with the intention of lowering the bucket, as he had often seen
his elders do.

"Al-f-u-r-d!" "Al-f-u-r-d!"

And the sound of hurrying feet only urged the boy on. He had caught hold
of the bucket and was leaning far over the dark opening when he felt a
heavy hand upon his shoulders, and himself lifted from his high perch,
only to be dropped sprawling on the ground with a shower of tin pans
rattling about his devoted head. Then the women, half fainting from
fright, fell upon him, each in a desperate effort to first embrace him
in thankfulness over his rescue from falling into the well.

When the women recovered their "shock" the First Born was lustily
yelling for papa. Mamma had him across her knee and was administering
the first full-fledged, unalloyed spanking of his childish existence. He
scarcely understood at first, then the full meaning of the threats the
guards had used to cure him of his one absorbing m