congealed. My clothes were rent, and as I groped about I
quickly found that my prison was a circular wall of stone, wet and
slimy, about four feet across, and that I was half reclining in water
with soft, yielding mud beneath me, while the air seemed close and foul.

The roof above me seemed high, for my voice appeared to ascend very far.
I looked above me and high up, so high that I could only just distinguish
it was a tiny ray of light--the light of day.

With frantic fingers I felt those circular walls, thick with the
encrustations and slime of ages. Then all of a sudden the truth flashed
upon me. My enemies, believing me dead, had thrown me down a well!

I shouted and shouted, yelled again and again. But my voice only echoed
high up, and no one came to my assistance.

My legs, immersed as they were in icy-cold water, were cramped and
benumbed, so that I had no feeling in them, while my hands were wet and
cold, and my head hot as fire.

As far as I could judge in the darkness, the well must have been fully
eighty feet or so deep, and after I had been flung headlong down it the
wooden trap-door had been re-closed. It was through the chink between the
two flaps that I could see the blessed light of day.

I shouted again, yelling with all my might: "Help! Help!" in the hope
that somebody in the vicinity might hear me and investigate.

I was struggling in order to shift into a more comfortable position, and
in doing so my feet sank deeper into the mud at the bottom of the
well--the accumulation of many years, no doubt.

Two perils faced me--starvation, or the rising of the water: for if it
should rain above, the water percolating through the earth would cause it
to rise in the well and overwhelm me. By the dampness of the wall I
could feel that it was not long since the water was much higher than my
head, as I now stood upright.

Would assistance come?

My heart sank within me when I thought of the possibility that I had been
precipitated into the well in the garden of Melbourne House, in which
case I could certainly not hope for succour.

Again I put out my hands, frantically groping about me, when something I
touched in the darkness caused me to withdraw my hand with a start.

Cautiously I felt again. My eager fingers touched it, for it seemed to be
floating on the surface of the water. It was cold, round, and long--the
body of a snake!

I drew my hand away. Its contact thrilled me.

The cobra had been