ard of the accident, to
secure a long rope, used in hoisting hay to the top of his big barns.

"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed, "a lad tumbled into my well! Mommer,"
turning to a motherly-looking, calico-clad woman, "you always told me to
cover that well up, and I never did, and now thar's a poor young chap
tumbled into it."

"Hurry," urged old Peter Bell; "he was almost exhausted, poor lad. We
must get back as quick as possible."

Summoning his two hired men the farmer set off at a run across the
fields, easily keeping pace with old Peter's decrepit horse. As they
neared the well they began shouting, and a feeble cry from the depths
answered them.

"Cheer up, my lad, we'll have you out of that in a brace-of-shakes,"
cried Farmer Ingalls encouragingly, as they reached the curb and peered
over into the dark hole.

"I hope you will," cried Roy. "It's getting pretty monotonous, I can tell
you."

"Don't know what mon-ount-on-tonous means, but I'd hate to change places
with you," agreed the farmer.

Presently the rope came snaking down, with a loop in its lower end. Roy
was directed to place his foot in the loop and hold on tight. When this
had been done he shouted up:

"All right! Haul away!"

The stalwart farmer and his two assistants began to heave with all their
might, while old Mr. Bell encouraged them. Before long, by dint of hard
exertions, they succeeded in dragging Roy to the surface, and dripping
and shivering he could stand once more in the blessed air and sunlight.

"But how in the world did you come to get in there?" asked the farmer, as
he paced along by the side of the hermit's little cart, in which the
half-exhausted Roy had been placed.

"Well," said the lad with a rather shamefaced laugh, "I'm really half
ashamed to say. But it was this way. Some bad men who have an interest in
putting me out of an aeroplane contest, of which Mr. Bell knows, had run
off with me in an automobile. It was wrecked, and I escaped. I struck out
toward town, as I thought, but as I came through that patch of woods by
the wall I saw something that startled me so much that I stepped back and
fell down the well."

"What did you see, my lad?" asked the farmer with half a twinkle in his
eye.

"Something like a story-book ghost," smiled Roy; "it was tall and all in
white and clanked a chain."

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared the farmer; "I half suspected as much. Why, that
ghost was my old white mule Boxer. He managed somehow to sn