His mind must have wandered a little later. It seemed as if his mother were beside him, encouraging him as she had done long before in his boyhood when he had wrestled with a difficult task. And then he was out in the woods with a crowd of his boyhood companions and the wild geese were flying south. Honk! Honk! Honk! "Guess that's why it's so cold," Joel said, addressing the shadowy assembly. "Winter's coming."
The sound of his own voice brought him back to reality. What he had heard was the horn of Persis' car. She had returned. And the love of life woke in him and gave him strength to scream lustily again and again.
As the children scrambled out upon the grass, all talking at once, Persis lifted an authoritative hand. "Hush! I thought I heard some one call."
"I don't hear nothing, Miss Dale," said Mary tranquilly. Persis again enjoined silence. As her gaze swept uneasily over the peaceful, familiar scene, her eyes were arrested by one of the rotting boards which had formed the cover of the unused well.
Joel, wrenching it from its place, had flung it out into the clover.
It had not been there that morning, Persis knew.
She ran toward it with a conviction of calamity which only took concrete form when she heard her brother's call issuing from the depths of the earth.
"The well," she cried with self-accusing anguish. "The old well." But when she stood by its edge and sent her voice ringing down into its depth, it was steady and strong.
"I'm going for help, Joel. 'Twon't be much of any time now. Just a little longer."
Mary and the children had never seen the Persis who came running toward them. They shrank back from her stern presence, half afraid.
"Mary, take the children into the house and keep them there. Call up the doctor and tell him to get here as quick as he can. And have that coil of new rope that's in the shed ready for me by the time I'm back."