Watch Yourself Go By | Page 2

Forbidden, punished, guarded, the child lost no opportunity to climb to the top of the square enclosure and wonderingly peer down into the depths of the well. To prevent his falling headlong to his death--a calamity frequently predicted--was the principal concern of all the family.
As the women folks were more often in the big kitchen than elsewhere, it became, as a matter of convenience, the daily prison of the First Born. The board, across the open doorway, and the eternal vigilance of his guards, did not prevent his starting several times daily on a pilgrimage towards the old well. The turning of a head, the absence of the guards from the kitchen for a moment, were the looked-for opportunities--crawling under or over the wooden bar, and starting in childish glee for the old well.
Previous to the time of this narrative, the race invariably resulted in the capture of "young hopeful" ere the well was reached. The shrill cry: "Al-f-u-r-d!" "Al-f-u-r-d!" always closely followed by the young woman who did the scouting for the other guards, brought him to a halt. He was lifted bodily, thrown high into the air, caught in strong, loving arms as he came down, roughly hugged and good-naturedly spanked, and carried triumphantly back to his prison--the kitchen. Here, seated upon the floor, he was roundly lectured by three women, who in turn charged one another with his escape. It was never his fault. Someone had turned a head to look at the clock, or the browning bread in the oven, turning to look at the cause of the controversy, not infrequently he was found astride the prison bar, or scampering down the path.
That old well, or its counterpart, was surely the inspiration of "The Old Oaken Bucket." However, their author was never imbued with fascination as alluring as that which influenced the First Born in his desire to solve the, to him, mystery of the old well.
The more his elders coaxed, bribed and threatened, the more vividly they depicted its dangers, the more determined he became to explore its darkened depths. The old well became a part of the child's life. He talked of it by day and dreamed of it by night. The big windlass, with its coil of seemingly never-ending chain, winding and unwinding, lowering and raising the old, oaken bucket green with age, full and flowing; the cooling water oozing between the age-warped staves, nurturing the green grasses growing about the box-like enclosure. How cooling the grass was to his feet as on tip-toes peeking over the top of the enclosure down into that which seemed to his childish imagination a fathomless abyss, so deep that ray of sun or glint of moon never penetrated to the surface of the water. The clanging of the chain, the grinding of the heavy bucket bumping against the walled circle as it descended, and the splash as it struck the water, were uncanny sounds to the boy's ears. The desire to look down, down into the old well's hidden secrets became to him almost a frenzy. The echoes coming up from its shadowy depths were as those of a haunted glen.
He reasoned that all men and women were created to guard the well and that it was his only duty in life to thwart them.
Balmy spring, with its song birds, buzzing bees and sweet-smelling blossoms, coaxed every living thing out of doors; everything, except the First Born and his guards.
Such was the situation when the bees swarmed. The guards "pricked up their ears," then, with eyes looking heavenward, and snatching up tin pans which they beat with spoons, sleigh-bells and other objects, they rushed from the kitchen to work the usual charm of the country folk in settling the swarming bees.
Thus unguarded, the little prisoner, carrying a three-legged stool that aided him in surmounting the bar across the kitchen door, trekked for the old well. Planting the stool at one side of the square enclosure, he looked down into the cavernous depths; leaning far over, reached for the chain, with the intention of lowering the bucket, as he had often seen his elders do.
"Al-f-u-r-d!" "Al-f-u-r-d!"
And the sound of hurrying feet only urged the boy on. He had caught hold of the bucket and was leaning far over the dark opening when he felt a heavy hand upon his shoulders, and himself lifted from his high perch, only to be dropped sprawling on the ground with a shower of tin pans rattling about his devoted head. Then the women, half fainting from fright, fell upon him, each in a desperate effort to first embrace him in thankfulness over his rescue from falling into the well.
When the women recovered their "shock" the First Born was lustily yelling for papa. Mamma had him across her knee and was administering