"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.