Minnie shook with terror as the bucket began to descend; every moment she fancied the rope giving way, and that she should be plunged into the water below. The strange damp smell, the dim light, the peculiar sound of her own voice in that hollow confined place, all added to her feeling of fear.
DOWN THE WELL.
“Stop, Tom,” she cried, as the bucket touched the water. Tom looked down, and could perceive some one below; but, all indistinct and dim, he could not have recognized that it was his sister.
“Can you find anything?” he whispered, kneeling down, after fixing the wheel, and leaning over with his hands resting on the brink. He heard a little splashing in the water, and waited for the answer of Minnie with great anxiety. “Can you find anything there?” he repeated.
“No.” Oh, the relief brought by that one little word!
“Have you searched well?” said Tom; “have you searched to the bottom?”
“Quite to the bottom; there is nothing but water—Heaven be praised,” said the hollow voice from below. “Now draw me up again; but softly, very softly. Oh, how thankful I shall be if I ever reach the top!”
There was not another word spoken by either brother or sister, while Tom, with painful exertion, turned the handle of the wheel, and first Minnie’s clinging hands, and then her frightened face, appeared above the level of the well.
Tom helped her to the side, which she could not have reached by herself, and then falling on her knees, the poor little girl returned her fervent thanks to Heaven, at once for Johnny’s deliverance from the well and her own.