Therefore, it seemed to me altogether sensible for my adventurers to begin by an exhaustive exploration of the old well. “Tom has some sense, at that,” I said to myself on reading Brent’s letter. To be sure, old Buck must have explored that black hole more than once; I could picture him visiting it again and again in those weary last years of his. Still, mud and débris accumulate in such a place, and it was barely possible that even within a day or two of the secreting of a box there, it might have been swallowed up in the oozy bottom of the dank hole. It was Brent who volunteered to descend into that forbidding place, and he insisted on having his way. They first took the precaution of getting some wood on fire and throwing it in so that they might see the bottom. They found the place to be very deep and the bottom covered with stones and rotten wood. Together they tumbled a heavy rock in to ascertain if the bottom was solid. Of course, the material below yielded under the weight of the rock, but Tom and Brent decided that there was no treacherous quicksand or even a perilous accumulation of mud below. Brent then let himself down, sliding over the edge and clinging to the branches of root which projected into the well through crevices in the rough masonry. Those damp, earthy tentacles were not pleasant to the touch. Here and there he could find a foothold on some slight projection of rock. But, after descending a few feet, he found himself with no dependable foothold below him and he was still a considerable distance from the bottom. “Don’t see how I’m going to make it,” he called. “Don’t drop,” Tom warned; “it’s too far.” “There’s a rock sticking out if I can only reach it with my foot,” Brent called. “I wish I was a few inches taller.” “Come back and I’ll try it,” Tom said. “I can’t get back, either,” answered Brent; “that piece of root I had hold of broke off. They don’t put the material into roots that they used to--quantity production, I suppose. I’m stranded--also sanded; my eyes are full of earth and woods and mountains and things. I bet that rock landed right on my eyeglass case.” “Watch your step,” Tom called down. “I haven’t got any step,” Brent answered. “Is this a time for joking?” At last, by a series of perilous acrobatics, he reached the bottom. “Here I am on terra cotta, or firma, or whatever they call it,” he shouted. “If we don’t find the money I’m going to climb buildings--Harold Lloyd. I’d climb the Woolworth Building for five and ten cents. Well, here I am; I wonder what property’s worth down here?” “Is it solid?” Tom called down. “It’s nice and springy,” said Brent. “I think I can be very happy down here; I suppose I’ll have to be, for I don’t know how I’m going to get up again. The root of the trouble, or I should say the trouble with the root----” “Oh, that’s easy,” Tom called. “I’ll get a rope.” “I’ll be the old oaken bucket,” called Brent,