The fair-haired tot had slipped into a deserted bored well, hid up under the house for so long that no one ever remembered when it had been dug, when it had been used, or when it had been deserted and covered up by the building. Moreover, no one happened to know how deep it was, as was later learned, and with these thoughts rushing through her frightened brain the nurse girl in charge of little Ben prepared to inform the child’s mother that her son was somewhere below earth, in a darkened, unknown hole. The alarm spread with a swiftness hardly believable. Within a few minutes every woman in the neighborhood and every man who might be located sitting about home during the busy part of the morning had rushed to the scene. The hole into which the boy had fallen was not large enough to carry light more than a few feet; no man in a thousand could squeeze his shoulders into the opening. To be exact, it measured thirteen inches in diameter, as a later measurement showed. Several men gazed into the blackness of the hole and gazed back again, their faces pale, their eyes wide with a helplessness that brought on an uncanny fright, even in the hearts of the strongest. Some suggested a rope, others thought of hooks, and some said dig a tunnel. All soon agreed, however, that none of the plans of rescue could be carried out, for a three-year-old boy would never be expected to grab a rope to be pulled through yards and yards of a bored well; iron hooks might tear the baby to pieces while rescuers knelt and heard his cries in vain, and a tunnel to the distance where his cries indicated he had fallen would certainly mean a fatal cave-in. Suggestions that some person be lowered had, of course, been advanced long before, but had proven useless, for not one person in the great crowd could enter the small opening. “Send out and get some boys,” shouted one of the directors of the work. The schools and their numerous offerings of all sizes and ages of lads came first into the minds of the volunteer hunters. Two automobiles rushed to a school less than three blocks away. “We want the nerviest, bravest kids you’ve got in the building,” said a member of the party to the superintendent. “Give us some small ones, who are not afraid.” The boys arrived. One by one they crept under the house; one by one they looked into the blackness of the hole, and one by one they drew back again. Their eyes glared and they soon became members of the back row of spectators. Then Henry Matthews came up. He rode into the edge of the crowd on his bicycle, upon which he carried clothes for a tailor, to support his widowed mother. “What’s the matter?” he inquired meekly. Some one broke the uncanny quietness for a moment and told him. “Here’s another kid; try him,” whispered a man to the would-be rescuers who had grown despondent. Henry walked forward. They told him what it meant to go headfirst for perhaps twenty or thirty feet downward. “Let me down,” said the frail boy quietly.