"No, no, the men are all right," he answered. Then, after a pause, he held something out to Ella. "Do you chance to know this?" he asked. "Can you tell to whom it belonged?" It was a small gold locket, dented in on one side and much discoloured, as if it had lain for some time in a damp place. Ella recognised it with staring eyes, and began to tremble with a fear she did not wait to define. "This was Katherine Keen's; it was my present to her on her birthday, and she had it on the night she was lost. Oh, Edward, where did you find it?" "I fear," he replied, "that we have found _her_." "Found her! Katherine?" Mrs. Carlyon put Ella back with her hand. "Sit down, my love," she said. "Frank"--turning to him--"do you say you have found Katherine Keen?" "I believe so. It can be no other." "Dead?" "Oh yes, poor girl." "But where?" "In that old well just beyond the wood-room. The men have been uncovering the well this morning, and--and--they have found some one lying in it. She had this locket round her neck." Ella sat down, white and silent, and hid her face amid the sofa-cushions. Mr. Denison caught up his stick, and hurried out. The news had already got wind. People were running to the spot; and it was just then that Lady Maria's carriage drove in. They had indeed found poor Katherine Keen. We must trace back to the time of Katherine's disappearance. This old well, situated not far from the door of the wood-room, had supplied the Hall with water for more than a hundred years. But at length, for some unknown cause, the spring had begun to fail, the water in the well gradually becoming lower, until what was left lay so deep down that it was not worth the labour of drawing up. After that, the old well was left to itself for several years, the woodwork above it. decaying and rotting slowly in summer sun and winter rain. It lay, as has been said, on the unfrequented side of the house. "I'll have this altered," said the Squire one day as he chanced to pass that way, and stood to look at it; and he at once gave orders that the woodwork should be removed and the well filled up. His wishes were not long in being carried out. The old woodwork disappeared, a quantity of earth and rubbish was collected to be shot into the well, and a large flag-stone, big enough to cover the whole of the orifice, was brought to the spot. The work was in progress one February afternoon, when the snow began to come down thick and fast, which caused the men to cease working until the morning, only a portion of the filling-up rubbish being then shot in.