The Yankee.
Even at that distance, there could be no doubt about it. The Yankee, with his strange, grinning, reckless face. His name was — Mr. Rampole. Yes. Mr. Rampole seemed to be testing the rope. He swung round on it, drawing up his legs. Climbing a few feet up the rope, he hung there with one hand and pulled at it with the other. Then he dropped to the ground and waved his hand again. Another light, like a bull's-eye lantern, flashed on. He hitched it to his belt, and into that belt he seemed to be thrusting other things — a hatchet and an instrument like a diminutive pick.
Sliding his body between two of the wide spikes on the edge of the well, he sat on the inner edge for a moment, holding the rope. He was grinning again, at the small figure which held the other light. Then he swung off the edge.and down into the well; his lamp was swallowed. But not before the small figure had darted to the edge, and, as the beam of Rampole's lamp struck upwards for an instant, Budge saw that the face bending over the well was the face of Miss Dorothy….
The watcher at the edge of the Hag's Nook was not now the adventurer Budge or even the butler Budge. He was simply a stooping, incredulous figure who tried to understand these amazing things. Frogs complained loudly, and there were bugs brushing about his face. Edging forward between the trees, he crept closer. Miss Dorothy's light went out. The thought went through his head that he would have a rare wild story to tell to the Rankins a month hence, over the port.
From the well a few broken reflections glimmered, as of a lamp sizzling out in water, but never quite extinguished. Momentarily the pointed leaves of a beech tree were outlined, and once (Budge thought) Miss Dorothy's face. But the cool moon had come out again, ghostly against the wall of the prison. Afraid of making a noise, tight-chested and sweating, Budge moved still closer. The chorus of frogs, crickets, God knew what! — this chorus was so loud that Budge wondered how any noise could be heard. It was cold here, too.
Now, it is to be urged that Budge was not, and never has been, an imaginative man. Circumstances do not permit it. But when he glanced away from the flickers of light dancing deep in the well, and saw a figure standing motionless in the moonlight, he knew it was an alien presence. Deep within him Budge knew that the presence of Miss Dorothy and the American was right, as right as gravy over roast beef, and that the other presence was wrong
It was — Budge tells it to this day — a small man. Standing some distance behind Miss Dorothy, a crooked shadow among the shadows of the trees against the moon, he seemed to grow into weird proportions, and he-had something in his hand.
A muffled noise bubbled up from the well. There had been other noises, but this was definitely a cry or a groan or a strangling of breath….
For a time Budge remembered nothing very clearly. Afterwards he tried to determine how long a time had elapsed between that booming echo and the time that a head appeared over the edge of the well once more, but he could never be sure. All he could be sure of was that Miss Dorothy, at some period or other, had snapped on her light. She did not point it down into the well. She kept it steady, across the mouth of the rusty spikes…. And up from the well, now, another lamp was strengthening as somebody climbed….
A head appeared, framed between the spikes. At first Budge did not see it very clearly, because he was trying to peer into the darkness to find that alien figure on the outer edge; that motionless figure which somehow gave an impression of wire and hair and steel, like a monster. Failing to see it, Budge looked at the head framed between the spikes, coming higher and higher above the well.