"I believe so. It can be no other."
"Dead?"
"Oh yes, poor girl."
"But where?"
"In that old well just beyond the wood-room. The men have been uncovering the well this morning, and--and--they have found some one lying in it. She had this locket round her neck."
Ella sat down, white and silent, and hid her face amid the sofa-cushions. Mr. Denison caught up his stick, and hurried out. The news had already got wind. People were running to the spot; and it was just then that Lady Maria's carriage drove in. They had indeed found poor Katherine Keen.
We must trace back to the time of Katherine's disappearance. This old well, situated not far from the door of the wood-room, had supplied the Hall with water for more than a hundred years. But at length, for some unknown cause, the spring had begun to fail, the water in the well gradually becoming lower, until what was left lay so deep down that it was not worth the labour of drawing up. After that, the old well was left to itself for several years, the woodwork above it. decaying and rotting slowly in summer sun and winter rain. It lay, as has been said, on the unfrequented side of the house.
"I'll have this altered," said the Squire one day as he chanced to pass that way, and stood to look at it; and he at once gave orders that the woodwork should be removed and the well filled up.
His wishes were not long in being carried out. The old woodwork disappeared, a quantity of earth and rubbish was collected to be shot into the well, and a large flag-stone, big enough to cover the whole of the orifice, was brought to the spot. The work was in progress one February afternoon, when the snow began to come down thick and fast, which caused the men to cease working until the morning, only a portion of the filling-up rubbish being then shot in.
Except the actual fact of the catastrophe itself, what else happened on that fatal night could only be matter of conjecture. The inference was, that Katherine, on reaching her bedroom and beginning to undress, lifted up a corner of the blind, and, peering out, saw her sister standing below gazing up at the window, a dark figure outlined against a snowy background. The snow by this time had ceased to fall, and a bright moon was struggling through the broken clouds. Katherine must then have hurried downstairs with the intention of seeing her sister and sending her back home. Although the house was being locked up, she would get out easily, and unseen, by the wood-room window, replacing the loose bar as a matter of precaution. This done, she no doubt ran round by this unfrequented way where the well was, and fell headlong into it, the two screams heard, one loud, the other fainter, escaping her in the act of falling. Whether she cried out afterwards, and there was no one to hear, or whether she fell senseless, or whether she was killed at once, must remain matter of supposition. After that, so far as was known, all was silence.