His feet were securely tied with a heavy rope. An electric light with an extension cord was placed in his hand. The boy gazed slowly about the peering faces and shoved his pale face into the blackness. Down he went, inch by inch, and then foot by foot. The rope disappeared, behind him for one yard, two yards, then three, four, five, and six yards. He was still going down, and the light had disappeared in the blackness. The rope must have gone forty feet, thought the men at the other end of the line. Then: “Pull,” came the faint command from down in the ground. The men at the other end smiled with eagerness as they carefully drew on the line. Then they looked at each other in excited expectation, for the load on the rope was heavier than when Harry descended. Ten feet of the rope had been pulled to the surface, when the men’s faces changed. Their eyes again filled with fright. Quickly they drew on the line, and soon Henry, his body covered with mud, sticks, and rubbish, appeared alone. They gave him water, fanned him for a second, and his pale face began to show faint color again. Then he spoke. “I pulled him about ten feet,” he panted, “but his hands--his hands--were so slick--the mud came off and he dropped back. He was on some sticks--sticks caught in the well--when I found him--I’m afraid he fell back through them. If he did, we can’t get him.” Bennie’s mother fainted and was carried away. Other women, screamed and rushed about blindly. Bennie’s voice was getting fainter. Old men cried--men whose hearts had faced everything from the trials of the Civil War to modern troubles. “Let me down again,” said the brave young rescuer, as he rubbed his face, as if to awaken to his undertaking. Again his face disappeared, then his body, and then his feet. On and on he went down. Thirty-five feet of the grass rope had disappeared when the order to “pull” was heard far off. Anxiously, and with, less hope than before, the men pulled. The line was heavier as they pulled, foot after foot, above the surface. The crying of a baby was heard down in the ground. The larger boy’s feet appeared at the top; then his body, and then his face. Then--little Bennie, clasped by each wrist by a pair of muddy hands, appeared on earth again. The women screamed and cried for the hundredth time that morning. The men, or rather, most of them, wept and then cheered. Now everybody cheered, and hundreds of voices let everybody within a block know that the romper-clad boy was in his mother’s arms. They also let those about know that Henry had emerged from beneath the house with eyes, hair, hands, and clothing covered with mud. They grabbed him; women kissed him, and men crowded about the boy.