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 

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