rom Lyme Regis. Thus he was able at last to enter the Castle
and to see well-house and well, and spent some days in trying to devise a
plan whereby we might get at the well without making the man who had
charge of it privy to our full design; but in this did not succeed.

There is a slip of garden at the back of the Bugle, which runs down to a
little stream, and one evening when I was taking the air there after
dark, Elzevir returned and said the time was come for us to put
Blackbeard's cipher to the proof.

'I have tried every way,' he said, 'to see if we could work this
secretly; but 'tis not to be done without the privity of the man who
keeps the well, and even with his help it is not easy. He is a man I do
not trust, but have been forced to tell him there is treasure hidden in
the well, yet without saying where it lies or how to get it. He promises
to let us search the well, taking one-third the value of all we find, for
his share; for I said not that thou and I were one at heart, but only
that there was a boy who had the key, and claimed an equal third with
both of us. Tomorrow we must be up betimes, and at the Castle gates by
six o'clock for him to let us in. And thou shalt not be carter any more,
but mason's boy, and I a mason, for I have got coats in the house,
brushes and trowels and lime-bucket, and we are going to Carisbrooke to
plaster up a weak patch in this same well-side.'

Elzevir had thought carefully over this plan, and when we left the Bugle
next morning we were better masons in our splashed clothes than ever we
had been farm servants. I carried a bucket and a brush, and Elzevir a
plasterer's hammer and a coil of stout twine over his arm. It was a wet
morning, and had been raining all night. The sky was stagnant, and
one-coloured without wind, and the heavy drops fell straight down out of
a grey veil that covered everything. The air struck cold when we first
came out, but trudging over the heavy road soon made us remember that it
was July, and we were very hot and soaking wet when we stood at the
gateway of Carisbrooke Castle. Here are two flanking towers and a stout
gate-house reached by a stone bridge crossing the moat; and when I saw it
I remembered that 'twas here Colonel Mohune had earned the wages of his
unrighteousness, and thought how many times he must have passed these
gates. Elzevir knocked as one that had a right, and we were evidently
expected, for a wicket in the heavy door was opened a