Hezekiah, however, on this occasion, was not quite so bad as that. His errand, according to his lights, was of a friendly nature; for he pried all round my little room with an extremely sagacious leer, and then gazed at me with a dark cock of his eye, and glanced askance at Bunny, and managed to wink, like the Commodore's ship beginning to light poop-lanterns. "Speak out, like a man," I said; "is your wife confined with a prophecy, or what is the matter with you?" "Hepzibah, the prophetess, is well; and her prophecies are abiding the fulness of their fulfilment. I would speak with you on a very secret and important matter, concerning also her revealings." "Then I will send the child away. Here, Bunny, run and ask mother Jones----" "That will not do; I will not speak here. Walls are thin, and walls have ears. Come down to the well with me." "But the well is a lump of walls," I answered, "and children almost always near it." "There are no children. I have been down. The well is dry, and the children know it. No better place can be for speaking." Looking down across the churchyard, I perceived that he was right; and so I left Bunny to dwell on her breakfast, and went with Hezekiah. Among the sandhills there was no one; for fright had fallen on everybody, since the sands began to walk, as the general folk now declared of them. And nobody looked at a sandhill now with any other feeling than towards his grave and tombstone. Even my heart was a little heavy, in spite of all scientific points, when I straddled over the stone that led into the sandy passage. After me came Hezekiah, groping with his grimy hands, and calling out for me to stop, until he could have hold of me. However, I left him to follow the darkness, in the wake of his own ideas. A better place for secret talk, in a parish full of echoes, scarcely could be found, perhaps, except the old "Red House" on the shore. So I waited for Perkins to unfold, as soon as we stood on the bottom step, with three or four yards of quicksand, but no dip for a pitcher below us. The children knew that the well was dry, and some of them perhaps were gone to try to learn their letters. What then was my disappointment, as it gradually came out, that so far from telling me a secret, Hezekiah's object was to deprive me of my own! However, if I say what happened, nobody can grumble.