“There is water,” he said, and began to lift off the stones, one by one.

Toto helped him quickly.  There were only three or four, and they were not heavy.  When the mouth of the shaft was uncovered all three knelt down and listened, instinctively lowering their lanterns into the blackness below.  The shaft was not wider than a good-sized old-fashioned chimney, like those in Roman palaces, up and down which sweeps can just manage to climb.

The three men listened, and distinctly heard the steady falling of a small stream of water upon the stones at the bottom.

“It is raining,” Toto said confidently, but he was evidently as much surprised by the sound as the others.  “There must be some communication with the gutters in the courtyard,” he added.

“There is probably a thunderstorm,” answered Malipieri.  “We can hear nothing down here.”

“If I had gone down again, I should have been drowned,” Toto said, shaking his head.  “Do you hear?  Half the water from the courtyard must be running down there!”

The sound of the falling stream increased to a hollow roar.

“Do you think the water can rise in the shaft?” asked Malipieri.

“Not unless the river rises and backs into it,” replied Toto.  “The drain is large below.”

“That cannot be ‘lost water,’ can it?”

“No.  That is impossible.”

“Put the boards in their place again,” Malipieri said.  “It is growing late.”

It was done in a few moments, but now the dismal roar of the water came up very distinctly through the covering.  Malipieri had been in many excavations, and in mines, too, but did not remember that he had ever felt so strongly the vague sense of apprehension that filled him now.  There is something especially gloomy and mysterious about the noise of unexplained water heard at a great depth under the earth and coming out of darkness.  Even the rough men with him felt that.

“It is bad to hear,” observed Masin, putting one more stone upon the boards, as if the weight could keep the sound down.

“You may say that!” answered Toto.  “And in this tomb, too!”

They went on, in the same order as before.  The passage to the dry well had been so much enlarged that by bending down they could walk to the top of the rope ladder.  Malipieri went down first, with his lantern.  Toto followed, and while Masin was descending, stood looking at the bones of the dead mason, and at the skull that grinned horribly in the uncertain yellow glare.

He took a half-burnt candle from his pocket, and some sulphur matches, and made a light for himself, with which he carefully examined the bones.  Malipieri watched him.

“The man who was drowned over sixty years ago,” said the architect.

“This,” answered Toto, with more feeling than accuracy, “is the blessed soul of my grandfather.”

“He shall have Christian burial in a few days,” Malipieri said gravely.