by continual spilling there of water. Then up flew his heels,
and he fell backwards with all his weight.

As soon as I saw how near the well-mouth he was got, I shouted out and
ran to save him; but Elzevir saw it quicker than I, and springing forward
seized him by the belt just when he turned over. The parapet wall was
very low, and caught the turnkey behind the knee as he staggered,
tripping him over into the well-mouth. He gave a bitter cry, and there
was a wrench on his face when he knew where he was come, and 'twas then
Elzevir caught him by the belt. For a moment I thought he was saved,
seeing Elzevir setting his body low back with heels pressed firm against
the parapet wall to stand the strain. Then the belt gave way at the
fastening, and Elzevir fell sprawling on the floor. But the other went
backwards down the well.

I got to the parapet just as he fell head first into that black abyss.
There was a second of silence, then a dreadful noise like a coconut
being broken on a pavement--for we once had coconuts in plenty at
Moonfleet, when the _Bataviaman_ came on the beach, then a deep echoing
blow, where he rebounded and struck the wall again, and last of all, the
thud and thundering splash, when he reached the water at the bottom. I
held my breath for sheer horror, and listened to see if he would cry,
though I knew at heart he would never cry again, after that first
sickening smash; but there was no sound or voice, except the moaning
voices of the water eddies that I had heard before.

Elzevir slung himself into the bucket. 'You can handle the break,' he
said to me; 'let me down quick into the well.' I took the break-lever,
lowering him as quickly as I durst, till I heard the bucket touch water
at the bottom, and then stood by and listened. All was still, and yet I
started once, and could not help looking round over my shoulder, for it
seemed as if I was not alone in the well-house; and though I could see no
one, yet I had a fancy of a tall black-bearded man, with coppery face,
chasing another round and round the well-mouth. Both vanished from my
fancy just as the pursuer had his hand on the pursued; but Mr. Glennie's
story came back again to my mind, how that Colonel Mohune's conscience
was always unquiet because of a servant he had put away, and I guessed
now that the turnkey was not the first man these walls had seen go
headlong down the well.

Elzevir had been in the well so long that I began to fear somethi