Here our guide took another key, and, while the door was being opened, Elzevir whispered to me, ‘It is the well-house,’ and my pulse beat quick to think we were so near our goal.

The building was open to the roof, and the first thing to be seen in it was that tread-wheel of which Elzevir had spoken.  It was a great open wheel of wood, ten or twelve feet across, and very like a mill-wheel, only the space between the rims was boarded flat, but had treads nailed on it to give foothold to a donkey.  The patient beast was lying loose stabled on some straw in a corner of the room, and, as soon as we came in, stood up and stretched himself, knowing that the day’s work was to begin.  ‘He was here long before my time,’ the turnkey said, ’and knows the place so well that he goes into the wheel and sets to work by himself.’  At the side of the wheel was the well-mouth, a dark, round opening with a low parapet round it, rising two feet from the floor.

We were so near our goal.  Yet, were we near it at all?  How did we know Mohune had meant to tell the place of hiding for the diamond in those words.  They might have meant a dozen things beside.  And if it was of the diamond they spoke, then how did we know the well was this one? there were a hundred wells beside.  These thoughts came to me, making hope less sure; and perhaps it was the steamy overcast morning and the rain, or a scant breakfast, that beat my spirit down—­for I have known men’s mood change much with weather and with food; but sure it was that now we stood so near to put it to the touch, I liked our business less and less.

As soon as we were entered the turnkey locked the door from the inside, and when he let the key drop to its place, and it jangled with the others on his belt, it seemed to me he had us as his prisoners in a trap.  I tried to catch his eye to see if it looked bad or good, but could not, for he kept his shifty face turned always somewhere else; and then it came to my mind that if the treasure was really fraught with evil, this coarse dark-haired man, who could not look one straight, was to become a minister of ruin to bring the curse home to us.

But if I was weak and timid Elzevir had no misgivings.  He had taken the coil of twine off his arm and was undoing it.  ’We will let an end of this down the well,’ he said, ’and I have made a knot in it at eighty feet.  This lad thinks the treasure is in the well wall, eighty feet below us, so when the knot is on well lip we shall know we have the right depth.’  I tried again to see what look the turnkey wore when he heard where the treasure was, but could not, and so fell to examining the well.

A spindle ran from the axle of the wheel across the well, and on the spindle was a drum to take the rope.  There was some clutch or fastening which could be fixed or loosed at will to make the drum turn with the tread-wheel, or let it run free, and a footbreak to lower the bucket fast or slow, or stop it altogether.