So I told him all that Mr. Glennie had told me, how that Colonel John Mohune, whom men called Blackbeard, was a wastrel from his youth, and squandered all his substance in riotous living.  Thus being at his last turn, he changed from royalist to rebel, and was set to guard the king in the castle of Carisbrooke.  But there he stooped to a bribe, and took from his royal prisoner a splendid diamond of the crown to let him go; then, with the jewel in his pocket, turned traitor again, and showed a file of soldiers into the room where the king was stuck between the window bars, escaping.  But no one trusted Blackbeard after that, and so he lost his post, and came back in his age, a broken man, to Moonfleet.  There he rusted out his life, but when he neared his end was filled with fear, and sent for a clergyman to give him consolation.  And ’twas at the parson’s instance that he made a will, and bequeathed the diamond, which was the only thing he had left, to the Mohune almshouses at Moonfleet.  These were the very houses that he had robbed and let go to ruin, and they never benefited by his testament, for when it was opened there was the bequest plain enough, but not a word to say where was the jewel.  Some said that it was all a mockery, and that Blackbeard never had the jewel; others that the jewel was in his hand when he died, but carried off by some that stood by.  But most thought, and handed down the tale, that being taken suddenly, he died before he could reveal the safe place of the jewel; and that in his last throes he struggled hard to speak as if he had some secret to unburden.

All this I told Elzevir, and he listened close as though some of it was new to him.  When I was speaking of Blackbeard being at Carisbrooke, he made a little quick move as though to speak, but did not, waiting till I had finished the tale.  Then he broke out with:  ’John, the diamond is yet at Carisbrooke.  I wonder I had not thought of Carisbrooke before you spoke; and there he can get fourscore feet, and twice and thrice fourscore, if he list, and none to stop him.  ’Tis Carisbrooke.  I have heard of that well from childhood, and once saw it when a boy.  It is dug in the Castle Keep, and goes down fifty fathoms or more into the bowels of the chalk below.  It is so deep no man can draw the buckets on a winch, but they must have an ass inside a tread-wheel to hoist them up.  Now, why this Colonel John Mohune, whom we call Blackbeard, should have chosen a well at all to hide his jewel in, I cannot say; but given he chose a well, ’twas odds he would choose Carisbrooke.  ’Tis a known place, and I have heard that people come as far as from London to see the castle and this well.’

He spoke quick and with more fire than I had known him use before, and I felt he was right.  It seemed indeed natural enough that if Blackbeard was to hide the diamond in a well, it would be in the well of that very castle where he had earned it so evilly.