Brion stood silent a minute. Curiosity, enough to hold him to the spot, still fought in him for mastery over his fears. ‘Did he, Fulk, use it, _as_ a well?’ he asked. The old woman shook her head. ‘That in the court,’ she said, ‘had already been sunk before his time. ’Tis an old, old pit, this--Roman. I’ve heard it called. It was there before the moat itself. Never bucket nor windlass has it had in my day. Like enow they were removed to the other.’ ‘And what is that great wheel, mother, fastened to the wall?’ He spoke with a shiver, for in some way the evil spirit of the place seemed concentrated to him in that diabolical mill. But the gammer did not know. ‘Some wicked contrivance of Fulk’s,’ she supposed; but for what purpose it was impossible to say. It was there when she came: and that was all she knew about it. She bent to her simples again, and, while she sought and plucked, Brion lingered near her. If she knew the reason well enough, she was flattered by the boy’s dependence on her. There was a soft place for him in even her dark old heart. He was a bold beautiful child, so to have dared the terrors of that mystery which to her was an article of superstitious faith; and his flying to her in the last resort had touched her to the quick. That night, as he was finishing his supper in the great gloomy hall, she came in to him with a handful of early daisies. ‘Lay these under thy pillow, and know sweet dreams,’ said she: and for some reason Brion did not laugh, but took the little blossoms from her with a wistful look into her eyes. CHAPTER VIII. THE APPARITION Thenceforth Brion avoided the neighbourhood of the old well-house; he kept that dark cloud of ilex trees at a nervous distance, and did not even care to let his glance wander their way. This mood of superstitious fear haunted him for some time, and then began to weaken, or to change in its constitution. The eternal spirit of curiosity crept back, like a scared sheep, to examine the cause of its own panic. He was ashamed of himself for having yielded so abjectly to a portent existing, perhaps, only in his imagination: he longed to find it _in_ himself to re-essay the test, and was angry because he could not at once rise to it. But the thought of the place fascinated him, and gradually, a little and a little more, drew him to venture foot again within the radius of its influence. That laugh he had heard was the laugh of Parthenope to his bewitched senses. It sickened yet it drew him. He had a feverish lust to fathom its source, and to grapple with whatever nameless horror it might reveal. That was his nature. He would come to be a tenacious fighter in his day patient to the fine limit of forbearance, but difficult to shake from his grasp, when once fastened on. Yet for long he could not bring his mind to face the great decision.