Slowly the ladder was lowered into the well, Teddy crowding back against the stones as he stood on the leafy bottom, so as to be out of the way. At last the ladder was in place.
“Now can you climb up, Ted?” called his father.
“Sure I can climb up,” was the answer, and a little later the head of the Curlytop lad appeared above the curbing. There were leaves and dirt and cobwebs in Teddy’s hair, but he didn’t mind that. “I brought the end of the rope up with me,” he said, showing it to his father. “You can fasten it to the windlass if you want to.”
“I don’t want to,” declared Mr. Martin. “And, just so you and Janet won’t be tempted to play diamond mine again, we’ll drop this old rope back to the bottom of the well. And you must start at once, Patrick, to fill it up.”
“Yes, sir, I will,” was the answer.
Mr. Martin took the end of the rope from Ted and let it drop back into the black depths where it fell on the bucket, already on the bottom.
Then the ladder was pulled up, and as Mr. Martin walked back toward the house with his wife and children Patrick got a shovel and began tossing dirt and rocks into the well, to fill it up level.
“There’ll be no more Curlytops down in you!” said the man, as he labored away. The wooden curbing was torn loose and the windlass broken. It was the end of the old well.
“But, anyhow, I got down it all right,” declared Ted, as he looked back and saw Patrick filling up the hole.
“Yes, but you might not have gotten out so easily if we hadn’t come to help you,” suggested Mrs. Martin.