And so he did, and experienced no soon reaction from it. In all the long weeks to follow unrelieved on his Uncle’s visit, no word of explanation or reassurance was to reach him; but he was left to formulate his own ideas as to the meaning of things, and to get through the weary days as best he could. At first, so miserable was he, he had no spirit to continue the open life of the hills and moors; but he would mope about the desolate house, vainly seeking distraction in its few familiar objects, or haunt the wildered grounds about it, kicking his cheerless heels among the tangled vegetation with which it was overrun. One day, when he was so idly disposed, trying to trace out the original contour of the beds in what had been the garden, now a confused waste of weed and vegetable matter, he made a discovery. He had covered, in his aimless dawdlings, the inner circuit of the estate, stopping now and again to look over the boundary wall into the dead stagnation of the moat, or to watch the oily scum on its surface open and shut like a mouth whenever he pitched a stone to it to gulp and swallow. Coming round, then, by way of the porter’s lodge, he ascended for the dozenth time, and in default of any brighter suggestion, to the empty rooms above the gate, only, for the dozenth time, to gaze with lacklustre eyes from their vacant windows, and to descend again as objectless as he had mounted. Eastward of the gatehouse were ranged the empty stables, the empty byres, the empty pig-pens and barns--for the Grange had farmed its own produce in days gone by--and beyond these, in a bastion of the wall, stood the columbarium, or circular dovecote built of stone, which contained within it a revolving ladder, like a cheval-de-frise on end, used for reaching the birds where they might rest in any of the rows of little cells with which the whole surface of the interior was chambered. There were no pigeons there now, nor had been for an age; but there was some mild excitement to be borrowed from mounting and spinning on the ladder; and Brion was contemplating that distraction, when his eye fell on the well in the courtyard which supplied the house with water. It was a familiar enough object, but never till this moment regarded by him in the light of a particular association. Was it, could it have been the very well down which the miser had cast the body of his victim those long years ago? Tingling, on tiptoe, he went to it and looked over. The hatch was closed; the bucket, the slack of its rope looped to the windlass, stood on the wall rim. And then a thought occurred to him. This well was sunk in the open for all to see, and the old woman had distinctly spoken of a well-house. Where?