That was about it, or else it was very nearly run down, and there they all were on the bank, just above the old bridge, and not a boy of them could think of anything he cared three buttons to go and do. It was a trying time, and they all broke down under it, for in less than an hour there were five listless boys sauntering along up the hill toward Beecher's Woods, across lots, without any earthly reason to give for doing it. They could not travel straight, somehow, even then, for they went around through Deacon Chittenden's pasture lot. There was a level stretch in the middle of that pasture, and in the middle of that level there was a hole about five feet across. It had been a round hole once, Put Boswell remarked, but he may have been wrong in adding:
"You see, boys, he had two old wells at the house, and this was the meanest; so he carted it up here, and drove it into the middle of his cow lot."
"Didn't drive it in very deep," said Charley Farrington. "Not more'n ten feet. If I should tumble in there, I could climb out again up that broken side."
"Water's pretty deep."
"Guess not. The Deacon isn't the kind of man to throw away anything. That's why he saved up his old well."
Put Boswell must have had his reasons for disliking Deacon Chittenden, from the way he talked about him; but the whole party was too full of that end of their vacation, and of talk about all they had done since they got hold of it by its July end, and they began to walk on. They walked as far as Beecher's fence, but they were unwise to trust themselves on the rotten top rail all at one time, for Abe Larrabee was just saying, "If there ain't Beecher's prize ram! look at his horns!" when there was a cracking sound under them, and down they came, in a tangle, with a length of the rickety fence criss-crossed beneath them.
Worse than that: Abe had pointed straight at the ram, and the insulted animal was coming in a hurry to see why there had been such a gap made in his boundaries.
"Run, boys, run!" shouted Put Boswell. "He's the all-killingest butter in the county!"
They had found something to do, and so had the ram, and he seemed, in a minute more, to have decided that his duties included the care of Deacon Chittenden's cow lot.
It was odd, but every one of those five boys had the same idea in his head: "If I can only put that well between him and me."