oved of itself like a living thing.

In the well, in the wood, the water leapt and gurgled, with a grotesque
noise like something swallowing, and then settled again with a second
sound. Cyprian could not see into the well clearly, for the opening,
from where he stood, was an ellipse, a mere slit, and half masked by
thistles and rank grass like a green beard. For where he stood now was
three yards away from the well, and he had not yet himself realized
that he had sprung back all that distance from the brink when the water
spoke.

III. THE MYSTERY OF THE WELL

Cyprian Paynter did not know what he expected to see rise out of
the well--the corpse of the murdered man or merely the spirit of the
fountain. Anyhow, neither of them rose out of it, and he recognized
after an instant that this was, after all, perhaps the more natural
course of things. Once more he pulled himself together, walked to the
edge of the well and looked down. He saw, as before, a dim glimmer of
water, at that depth no brighter than ink; he fancied he still heard
a faint convulsion and murmur, but it gradually subsided to an utter
stillness. Short of suicidally diving in, there was nothing to be
done. He realized that, with all his equipment, he had not even brought
anything like a rope or basket, and at length decided to return for
them. As he retraced his steps to the entrance, he recurred to, and took
stock of, his more solid discoveries. Somebody had gone into the wood,
killed the Squire and thrown him down the well, but he did not admit for
a moment that it was his friend the poet; but if the latter had actually
been seen coming out of the wood the matter was serious. As he walked
the rapidly darkening twilight was cloven with red gleams, that made him
almost fancy for a moment that some fantastic criminal had set fire to
the tiny forest as he fled. A second glance showed him nothing but one
of those red sunsets in which such serene days sometimes close.

As he came out of the gloomy gate of trees into the full glow he saw a
dark figure standing quite still in the dim bracken, on the spot where
he had left the woodcutter. It was not the woodcutter.

It was topped by a tall black hat of a funeral type, and the whole
figure stood so black against the field of crimson fire that edged the
sky line that he could not for an instant understand or recall it. When
he did, it was with an odd change in the whole channel of his thoughts.

"Doctor Br