The sides of this well are not moist, green, or clammy, like the sides of some others where damp and noxious exhalations abound, but dry and clean; for it is said that there are below hidden entrances and exits for the water, which keep it always moving.  So these bricks were also dry and clean, and this mark as sharp as if made yesterday, though the issue showed that ’twas put there a very long time ago.  Now the mark was not deeply or regularly graven, but roughly scratched, as I have known boys score their names, or alphabet letters, or a date, on the alabaster figures that lie in Moonfleet Church.  And here, too, was scored a letter of the alphabet, a plain ‘Y’, and would have passed for nothing more perhaps to any not born in Moonfleet; but to me it was the cross-pall, or black ‘Y’ of the Mohunes, under whose shadow we were all brought up.  So as soon as I saw that, I knew I was near what I sought, and that Colonel John Mohune had put this sign there a century ago, either by his own hands or by those of a servant; and then I thought of Mr. Glennie’s story, that the Colonel’s conscience was always unquiet, because of a servant whom he had put away, and now I seemed to understand something more of it.

My heart throbbed fiercely, as many another’s heart has throbbed when he has come near the fulfilment of a great desire, whether lawful or guilty, and I tried to get at the brick.  But though by holding on to the rope with my left hand, I could reach over far enough to touch the brick with my right ’twas as much as I could do, and so I shouted up the well that they must bring me nearer in to the side.  They understood what I would be at, and slipped a noose over the well-rope and so drew it in to the side, and made it fast till I should give the word to loose again.  Thus I was brought close to the well-wall, and the marked brick near about the level of my face when I stood up in the bucket.  There was nothing to show that this brick had been tampered with, nor did it sound hollow when tapped, though when I came to look closely at the joints, it seemed as though there was more cement than usual about the edges.  But I never doubted that what we sought was to be found behind it, and so got to work at once, fixing the wooden frame of the candle in the fastening of the chain, and chipping out the mortar setting with the plasterer’s hammer.

When they saw above that first I was to be pulled in to the side, and afterwards fell to work on the wall of the well, they guessed, no doubt, how matters were, and I had scarce begun chipping when I heard the turnkey’s voice again, sharp and greedy, ’What are you doing? have you found nothing?’ It chafed me that this grasping fellow should be always shouting to me while Elzevir was content to stay quiet, so I cried back that I had found nothing, and that he should know what I was doing in good time.