“How would you like to slip down such a well?”

“I’m afraid I’m too big,” answered Ollie.  “Well, perhaps you are; but there was a child last summer over near where I live who wasn’t too big.  He was a little fellow not much over two years old.  The well was a new one, and the curb was almost even with the top of the ground.  He slipped down feet first.  It was a hundred and twenty feet deep, with fifteen feet of water at the bottom; but he fitted pretty snug, and only went down about fifty feet at first.  His mother missed him, saw that the cover was gone from the well, and listened.  She heard his voice, faint and smothered.  There was no one else at home.  She called to him not to stir, and went to the barn, where there was a two-year-old colt.  He had never been ridden before, but he was ridden that afternoon, and I guess he hasn’t forgotten the lesson.  She came to my place first, told me, and rode away to another neighbor’s.  In half an hour there were twenty men there, and soon fifty, and before morning two hundred.

“There was no way to fish the child out-the only thing was to dig down beside the small shaft.  We could hear him faintly, and we began to dig.  We started a shaft about four feet square.  The sandy soil caved badly, but men with horses running all the way brought out lumber from Grand Rapids for curbing.

“The child’s father came too.  He listened a second at the small shaft, and then went down the other.  Two men could work at the bottom of it.  One of the men was relieved every few minutes by a fresh worker, but the father worked on, and did more than the others, not-withstanding the changes.  All of the time the mother sat on the ground beside the small shaft with her arms about its top.  At four o’clock in the morning we were down opposite the prisoner.  He was still crying faintly.  We saw that to avoid the danger of causing him to slip farther down we must dig below him, bore a hole in the board, and push through a bar.  But a few shovelfuls more were needed.  The work jarred the shaft, and the child slipped twenty—–­five feet deeper.  At seven o’clock we were down to where he was again, though we could no longer bear him.  We dug a little below, bored a bole, and the father slipped through a pickaxe handle, and fainted away as he felt the little one slide down again but rest on the handle.  We tore off the boards, took the baby out, and drew him and his father to the surface.  There were two doctors waiting for them, and the next day neither was much the worse for it.”

The man got on his horse and rode away.  We agreed that he had told us a good story, but the next day others assured us that it had all happened a year before.

VI:  BY CAYNONS TO VALENTINE