Both vanished from my
fancy just as the pursuer had his hand on the pursued; but Mr. Glennie's
story came back again to my mind, how that Colonel Mohune's conscience
was always unquiet because of a servant he had put away, and I guessed
now that the turnkey was not the first man these walls had seen go
headlong down the well.
Elzevir had been in the well so long that I began to fear something had
happened to him, when he shouted to me to bring him up. So I fixed the
clutch, and set the donkey going in the tread-wheel; and the patient
drudge started on his round, recking nothing whether it was a bucket of
water he brought up, or a live man, or a dead man, while I looked over
the parapet, and waited with a cramping suspense to see whether Elzevir
would be alone, or have something with him. But when the bucket came in
sight there was only Elzevir in it, so I knew the turnkey had never come
to the top of the water again, and, indeed, there was but little chance
he should after that first knock. Elzevir said nothing to me, till I
spoke: 'Let us fling the jewel down the well after him, Master Block; it
was evilly come by, and will bring a curse with it.'
He hesitated for a moment while I half-hoped yet half-feared he was going
to do as I asked, but then said:
'No, no; thou art not fit to keep so precious a thing.
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