here? What mean ye yellin' that gait? Speak,
man, if ye can."

He could only point downward, while he strained his ears to catch any
sound that might come from below.

Then Cleena shook him fiercely. "Speak, I tell ye! Where's the boy?"

The other still pointed down into the shaft, but he made out to say:--

"I heard him laugh, then shout, and he must have gone stark crazy."

"He down there? That poor, senseless gossoon? Where was you that you'd
leave him do it?"

"I was walking--wait! I hear something."

Four white, terror-stricken faces now bent above the old well, while
Cleena's arms clasped her "childer" tightly, fearing they, too, might be
snatched away from her.

"Saints save us, it's bewitched! Oh, the day, the day!"

"Shut up, woman! Keep still. I hear something."

Again they stooped and listened, and Amy's keen ears reported,
joyfully:--

"It's Fayette! It is, it is! It sounds as if he were speaking from the
far end of a long, long tube. But he's alive, he's alive!"

"He might as well be dead. His bones must be broken, and he can't live
long in such an air as that," said Hallam.

"I don't know. That he's alive at all proves that the air isn't as bad
as I thought. Besides, he may not have broken any bones. He's had
fearful falls, before this, and he always came out about sound. But the
rope doesn't reach much more than two-thirds down. I've heard they dug
this well a hundred and fifty feet deep. They had to, to reach water
from top this rock."

"A hundred and fifty feet! How can we possibly reach him?"

"Not by standin' talkin'. Whisk to the cottage, Amy, an' beg the length
of all the rope they have. To save a lad's life--be nimble!"

The girl was away long before Cleena finished speaking, while the latter
herself darted into the house, caught off the sheets and blankets from
the beds, and tore them into strips. Never wasting one motion of her
strong hands, and praying ceaselessly, she tied each fresh length and
tested it with all her force.

Meanwhile Amy almost flew over the space between "Spite House" and the
cottage, arriving there nigh breathless; but gasping out her errand, she
rushed straight to the line in the drying yard and began to tear it from
its fastenings on the poles.

"You're wanting my rope, miss? Somebody in the well? Heaven help him!
But wait! If it's _cleaning_ the well he is, why of course he'd be down
there. Who is it?"

"Fayette. Maybe you know him as 'Bony.'"

"