INNIE and her brother stood at the brink of the well, and gazed with straining eyes into its depths. “Which of us should go down?” said Minnie.
“You need not have asked such a question; you know that you are not strong enough to draw me up; and I doubt,” added Tom, passing his hand along the rope—“I doubt if this is strong enough to bear me.”
Minnie drew one step backwards. “If it should break with me!” she murmured.
“You should have thought of that before,” was Tom’s only reply.
[141]“Tom, at all risks I must go—I could not sleep to-night with this horrible doubt on my mind, and you will not let me call others to help. I trust that the Almighty will take care of me, for my only hope is in Him. Help me to get into the bucket; and, oh! be very careful, dear Tom—you do not know how much frightened I am.”
“Hold the rope firmly,” said her brother; “and here, take this long stick to feel about in the water when you are down.” Tom was extremely anxious to have his own mind relieved, or, heartless as he was, he could hardly have consented to let his young sister run this risk. But there was nothing that the selfish boy dreaded so much as that his share in Johnny’s wanderings should be known, if his fearful suspicion were true, and the poor child had indeed perished through his folly.
Minnie shook with terror as the bucket began to descend; every moment she fancied the rope giving way, and that she should be[142] plunged into the water below. The strange damp smell, the dim light, the peculiar sound of her own voice in that hollow confined place, all added to her feeling of fear.
 
DOWN THE WELL.
“Stop, Tom,” she cried, as the bucket touched the water. Tom looked down, and could perceive some one below; but, all indistinct and dim, he could not have recognized that it was his sister.
[143]“Can you find anything?” he whispered, kneeling down, after fixing the wheel, and leaning over with his hands resting on the brink. He heard a little splashing in the water, and waited for the answer of Minnie with great anxiety. “Can you find anything there?” he repeated.
“No.” Oh, the relief brought by that one little word!
“Have you searched well?” said Tom; “have you searched to the bottom?”
“Quite to the bottom; there is nothing but water—Heaven be praised,” said the hollow voice from below. “Now draw me up again; but softly, very softly. Oh, how thankful I shall be if I ever reach the top!”
There was not another word spoken by either brother or sister, while Tom, with painful exertion, turned the handle of the wheel, and first Minnie’s clinging hands, and then her frightened face, appeared above the level of the well.
Tom helped her to the side, which she[144] could not have reached by herself, and then falling on her knees, the poor little girl returned her fervent thanks to Heaven, at once for Johnny’s deliverance from the well and her own.
“Now let us return,” said Tom; “there is no use in remaining here. It is growing quite dark, and beginning to rain. We can continue our search in the morning.”
“But if poor little Johnny should be somewhere in this wood, only think what he would suffer left out all night. It would kill him with fright, if not with the weather. Remember, Tom, that no one else is likely to have looked for him here; a place which he could never have reached by himself.”
Tom muttered something between his teeth, which, perhaps, it was as well that Minnie did not hear; but he certainly looked around him more carefully.
Minnie had wandered a few steps from her brother, and was slowly walking round the greensward surrounding the well—a[145] clear space which was almost inclosed by the wood, only open on the side by which they had approached it, and from which two dark narrow paths, scarce wide enough to permit two persons to pass each other, led into the depths of the forest. On a sudden she stopped, stooped down, then eagerly cried out, “Oh, look what I have here!—he must be near!—he must be near!” Tom hastened to the spot, and beheld in Minnie’s hand a little dusty shoe, with its strap and round black button, which both felt certain had belonged to the lost child.
“Well,............