That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in no hurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet. And it did, too.

When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let down a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there was forty-one feet of water in it. I called in a monk and asked:

“How deep is the well?”

“That, sir, I wit not, having never been told.”

“How does the water usually stand in it?”

“Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth, brought down to us through our predecessors.”

It was true — as to recent times at least — for there was