Part 5

“No, Rob,” said Mr. Evans, “I think Katie is right. It might be dangerous to drink the water. But it looks delicious. What a pity that we cannot use spring water from our own ancestral well, instead of buying it at the store as every one else must!”

“Please, Papa--just one little sip?” begged Rob.

“No, not one little sip, Son. Here, Katie, empty the pail of water into the sink,” said Mr. Evans firmly.

Tremblingly Katie took the pail and went with it to the sink. But she had not turned half the water away when she gave a scream.

“Ow! The whimperin’ and cryin’! Hark till it!” she shrieked. And indeed, it seemed to Rob that the water sobbed and moaned as it ran down the sink spout. Suddenly he had an idea.

“It is too bad to let the beautiful fresh Indian spring water run into the horrid old sewer,” he said. “Please, Papa, come with me and let me pour it back into the well.”

“Pooh, pooh!” laughed Mr. Evans. “What an idea! You are as silly as Katie, Rob. I don’t want you to get strange ideas into your head. But--well, come along, since you are so anxious that the famous water should not be wasted. I want to cover up the well tightly, so that no one can fall in.”

Downstairs they went once more, Rob carrying the pail half full of water, which he poured back into the well. With a glad _splash_ it joined the hidden spring far, far below, and again Rob felt sure that he caught the sound of a whispering voice, tinkling, trickling, sighing, sobbing, as if it were trying to say something to him, perhaps to thank him. He bent over the well, listening eagerly. But his father pulled him back by the hand.

“Come, Rob,” he said. “I want to put the cover in place, and then we must go upstairs. It is time that you were in bed.”

So they let down the cover with a _bang!_ and Rob went away with his father out of the dark cellar and into the gaslight. But the sound of those queer little noises followed after him, upstairs and upstairs, and even after he was in bed.

II

The queer little sounds followed Rob upstairs, and even after he was in bed he could hear them echoing from far below in the cellar. At first they were only little trickly sounds, like water _seekling_ afar off. But by and by, when the house was very still, because everybody except Rob had fallen sound asleep, the noises grew louder and plainer. They grew into a soft murmur, sometimes a sob, sometimes the whisper of a little silver voice. And at the same time there was a gentle knocking. Rob listened and listened as hard as ever he could, and he said to himself,--

“Surely, Katie is right. There is something strange about the cellar, and I think it comes from the old well. What can it be?”

Finally the voice sounded so loud and so plain that Rob could hear distinctly what it was saying, and it seemed to be talking to him.

“Let me out; ah, let me out!” cried the silvery, trickly voice, and again Rob heard the knocking. “Good little boy, you who would not let the water of the Indian spring be wasted, come and free me from my prison of so many years.”

A prisoner! Some one was shut up in the old well! Rob sat up in bed. He must set the prisoner free. He was not a bit frightened at the thought of going down all alone into the cellar, for he knew that there was nothing more to be afraid of in the dark than in the daylight. He got up and thrust his feet into a pair of slippers and put on his bath robe. Then very softly, so as not to waken anybody in the house, he crept downstairs: down to the floor where his father and mother slept,--he could hear them breathing as he passed the door; down past the library where the books lived and all night long told silent stories to one another in the moonlight; down to the empty dining-room, and through to the kitchen. Here Rob found a candle on a shelf and lighted it. Then, taking this in one hand and holding up his trailing bath robe with the other, he stole down the cellar stairs. The voice was calling now louder than ever, and with it sounded the knocking, which certainly came from the old well.

“Let me out, O kind boy!” sobbed the silvery, tinkling voice. “Let me out. Oh! I thought I was free to-day, but alas! Here I remain yet a prisoner, for how many more long years? O kind little boy, the first one to do me a good turn, let me out, let me out!”

Rob hastened to the corner in which was the old well. And as he drew near, the voice became plainer and plainer, and the knockings louder and louder. He set the candle down on the floor beside the rat-trap which his father had baited that afternoon, and his heart beat fast as he bent over the cover of the well and seized the iron ring in both hands. Should he be able to lift it?

One--two--three! Rob strained hard, but the cover would not budge. One--two--three, again! It was so heavy for a little boy to lift. One--two--three! Once more! Rob felt the cover move a tiny bit. The noises down in the well had ceased suddenly. It was very still. Rob could hear his heart thumping like the screw of a steamboat. Now, for one last time! One--two--_three_! The cover came up suddenly, so suddenly that Rob nearly went over backward. There below yawned the great black hole of the well.

“Oh!” said Rob, drawing a long breath.

“_Oh!_” Was it an echo, or a soft little voice, far, far below?

Rob took up the candle and peered down into the well. But he could see nothing. “Is any one down there?” he asked. At first there was no answer, and then there came a tinkly, trickly sound like water bubbling, which turned at last into a whispered “_Yes!_” There certainly was some one in the old well!

“Who are you?” said Rob, tingling all over with excitement.

“Oh, little friend, kind boy,” said the voice, “I am the Fairy of the Indian spring, shut up here for years and years, unable to get out. I have called and called, but you are the first who has come to aid me.”

“What can I do to help you?” asked Rob eagerly.

“Let down the bucket as you did this afternoon,” said the voice. “Let down the bucket and draw me up.”

The pail with the ball of twine lay close beside the well, where Rob’s papa had forgotten it that afternoon. Rob set the candle down on the floor and began to lower the pail into the well. Yard after yard after yard the hungry throat swallowed the cord. Finally he heard the pail splash as it reached the water. He waited a moment. The pail bobbed about and then grew heavy on the cord. Then the silver voice cried, “Draw up, draw up, kind boy!”

Rob pulled on the cord eagerly,--pulled and pulled without looking down into the well, until the pail tinkled against the bricks of the cellar floor. In the flare of the candle-light Rob saw that it was full of water. But that was not all! Standing with feet braced across the top of the pail, clinging to the cord, was the strangest little figure about six inches high; a little figure dressed all in brown, with black hair and bright eyes. When the pail rested on the cellar floor he leaped off and stood before Rob, bowing, with one hand laid upon his head.

And then Rob saw that it was a tiny Indian. His brown dress was soft like deerskin, and his leggings were fringed. His limp black hair fell over a face of red-bronze, with high cheek-bones and pouting lips. In his hair he wore a tiny blue feather, perhaps from a blue jay’s wing, and in his hands he carried the sweetest little toy bow, while a quiver of inch-long arrows hung on his shoulders. His feet were covered with moccasins, and he was the exact copy of a Wild West Indian; only he looked like one seen through the wrong end of an opera-glass.

“Oh--you must be an Indian Fairy,” cried Rob, with his eyes bulging.

“Yes, Friend,” said the tiny one. “I am an Indian Fairy, the Fairy of the Indian spring. And you have brought me up for the second time this day, though you did not see me the first time. This is the second time during fifty years that I have left the well. Ah, must I go back again?” Despite the warlike appearance of the little man his silvery voice began to tremble.

“Tell me all about it,” said Rob soothingly.

“I am the Fairy who lived by the spring years, and years, and years ago, before the White Men came to Shawmut,” said the Fairy.

“What is Shawmut?” asked Rob, wondering.

“Shawmut is the Indian name of this place,” said the Fairy. “It means the Place of Springs, and it was so named because of the many bubbling springs on the hillside above the river. Oh! there were many, many of us. I had dozens of brothers. But my spring was in the fairest spot. This water was the sweetest and clearest of any. Heigho! How often the great braves used to kneel here for a refreshing draught when they returned from the hunt or from war! They never saw me, for I hid in the moss about the spring. But I loved to look at them, they were so big and wonderful.”

“Oh, what did they look like?” asked Rob eagerly, for Rob loved to hear about Indians.

“They dressed as I do,” said the Fairy. “But sometimes their faces were painted green or red or blue. And I could see no good in that. Sometimes they wore tassels of hair at their belts. Ugh! I did not like that fashion. Sometimes their hands were red, and when they went away the waters of my spring were stained. Ugh! Neither did I like that. But they were brave and strong and noble. I loved the Red Men, for they lived out of doors in the sweet sunlight, as I did. They loved the fresh air and the blue sky and the green grass. They would have no stifling roof over their heads to shut out the sky; no four walls to keep off the fresh air. Ugh! I cannot breathe in a house. I stifle! I choke!”

“Then how did you come to be shut up in this house?” asked Rob, wondering very much.

“Listen. The White Men came to Shawmut; White Men with cows and dogs, women and children. They built houses on the Hill, near the bubbling springs, and planted corn. They drove away the Red Men, and I loved them not, for they were different. They wore ugly dark garments, hats and short cropped hair. They lived in close wigwams, and cared nothing for fresh air and blue sky. Neither did they love the trees, but cut them down to burn, and mowed the flowers for their ugly ploughed fields. The woods and the streams meant nothing to them but places wherein they might hunt and fish, which they did gloomily. For they were solemn folk and sad. They thought it wicked to laugh merrily, as the brook laughs, or to smile like the flowers. Even the little children dared not be too gay, but were afraid of their fathers!”

“That must have been a horrid time for children,” said Rob.

“Alas! It was indeed a sad time for everybody,” went on the Fairy. “The brave Red Men were gone. Even the rabbits and squirrels were gone. The Hill was peopled with solemn and ugly folk, who dared not be happy, and it was no longer beautiful as before. Yet I could not go away and leave my spring, my dear spring, which ran sweet and clear as ever. It was the favorite fountain of the Puritans, and crouching down under the moss and ferns I watched them come and go, gloomily, filling their buckets and pitchers. But I loved them not, and I hoped that the Red Men would come back and drive them away. But the Red Men never came again.”

“And what happened next?” asked Rob, much interested.

“Years went by, and the Hill became crowded with the White Men’s ugly wigwams. The springs still bubbled, but it was a sad song that they sang, for everything was changed. But that was not the worst. Came a day when a man built a house over my very spring! He shut in the bubbling water under a roof, between four ugly walls, where the blue sky could no longer shine upon it nor the fresh air visit it freely! Alas! Would that I had escaped before then. I might have gone earlier, though it would have been sorrowful to desert my lonely spring. But I had not guessed what was about to happen until it was too late. I had not thought that even a White Man could be so cruel as to wall up a living spring. I was asleep under the moss and ferns when they raised the roof over me. Alas! I did not even waken at the sound of their wicked hammers. But when I opened my eyes it was too late. There was a screen between me and the sky!”

“Why did you not run away?” asked Rob sympathetically.

“Oh, you do not understand,” answered the Fairy with a sad little smile. “I might have escaped at any time before the roof covered me. But as soon as there was a roof above my head, and four walls rose around me, I was under the magic spell of the White Men. I could not go away, even though the doors and windows were yet yawning holes. I must remain, even as the well must remain, until some one should take pity on me and set me free.”

“And could you find no one to do that in all those years?” cried Rob.

“Alas! No. The people who lived in the house were dull folk who did not believe in Fairies. For many years and many years I have remained shut up in the darkness of this cellar, pining in the deserted well. It is quite useless and forgotten. Long ago the ferns and mosses died, and I have no green thing left to love, nothing beautiful to see.”

“Poor Fairy!” said Rob, and the tears stood in his eyes.

“I have cried, I have called, I have knocked on the walls of the well,” said the Fairy, “but no one has seemed to hear my voice. Or if folk heard they have not understood. Years ago some one who stepped as you step, whose voice sounded like yours--I never saw his face--used to come sometimes and listen at the well, and I heard him wish and wonder. But that was all.”

“It must have been my father!” exclaimed Rob, remembering what had been said at the breakfast table.

“But he could not understand what I tried to tell him,” went on the Fairy. “He wondered and walked about, but he always went away without doing anything. It was as if I spoke a foreign language. But you see I do not. You understand me quite well, is it not so?”

“Oh, yes!” cried Rob. “And yet it is very strange. It is not language such as others speak. It is like trickling water that makes words.”

The Fairy laughed. “It is not language at all,” he said. “But you know it. There were women, too; women with loud voices and a curious twist to their tongues. They heard my voice, some of them seemed even to understand what I cried. For I heard them exclaim and wonder and talk of the Fairy Folk. The first time that this happened I was hopeful. Surely, I said to myself, they know the Fairies. They say that they come from a Green Land where many Fairies live. Surely, surely they will love the Little Men of another country. They will understand why I long for green grass and blue sky and fresh air. They will help me to escape. But no! They were cowards. They screamed and fainted when I spoke from the old well. They must have had wicked hearts, for they feared the Fairies. They dared not come near, but complained to the master and mistress, and would not live in the same house with me.”

“Silly things!” said Rob. “Katie was one of them.”

“So to please them the well was covered,” sighed the Fairy, “and then it was worse than ever. Think how dark, how lonely, how ugly a home it was for an Indian Fairy who loved the free, open life of outdoors! Oh, for the green woods, the sunshine and blue sky! The song of birds and the odor of flowers! Oh, to feel the soft green moss, and taste the dew fresh in the morning! Please let me out, kind boy, that I may know those joys again!”

“Dear Fairy,” said Rob hesitatingly, “I am so sorry, but to find all these things, save the sky and air, one must now seek far from here. The White Men have driven them away, just as they drove the Indians, the squirrels, and the rabbits. There is no green grass, there are no flowers, no moss, no ferns on all the Hill.”

“What do you tell me!” cried the Fairy. “My Hill is no longer beautiful?”

“It is beautiful,” said Rob. “At least, the White Men call it so. But the wigwams are thick and very tall, shutting out the sunlight from the paths between. And these paths are dusty, hard streets, with neither grass nor trees nor flowers.”

“Oh, why do White Men try so hard to make the world ugly?” wailed the poor Indian Fairy. “How can they live away from the woods and the flowers and the beautiful, beautiful green grass! Where shall I go? What shall I do?”

Rob thought and wondered, and thought again. And at last he had an idea. “There is a green country not so very far from here,” he said. “One goes there in an electric car,--but you don’t know what a car is. Never mind. I went there yesterday and brought away some beautiful ferns, growing in the mossy earth.”

“Oh, that I might see them!” cried the Fairy eagerly. “One sniff of leafy mould, one breath of the woods lingering about the tufted moss! To lie once more in the shadow of a fern and feel its freshness on my face! Where is this woodsy wonder?”

“It is upstairs in my bedroom,” answered Rob. “Will you come with me?”

The Fairy hesitated, looked at the pail of water resting beside the well, and brightened with a sudden thought.

“Yes!” he cried. “I know what may be done. You can set me free, kind boy, you only, of all the folk who have come to the Indian spring since the Red Men left it. The spell which binds me to the spring and chains me beneath the roof can only be broken when the water is set free again to mother earth. Yesterday I came near to being emptied into the horrible sewer. You heard my cry as the first of the water was lost. You saved me. For had the pail been emptied then I must have followed. And to what a fate!”

“It empties at last into the ocean,” said Rob.

“And that would have been the end of me,” shivered the Fairy. “Salt water is the one thing which would destroy me utterly. But come now. I know how I may be freed. Take the pail of water and bring me with it to the blessed clump of ferns.”

Rob agreed; he took up the candle in one hand and the pail of water in the other. Lightly as a bird the Fairy sprang upon the rim of the pail, clinging to the cord. And so they went together up out of the cellar, through the empty kitchen and dining-room; very softly up the stairs, past the library of silent-talking books; up and up, very, _very_ creepily past the bedroom door ajar, whence Rob heard the sound of his father and mother snoring peacefully; up and up and up, tiptoeing so as not to wake Katie, to Rob’s own chamber. And there on the window-seat stood a big flower-pot with the beautiful ferns which the day before Rob had dug up in the woods. The Fairy smelled them as soon as he entered the room.

“Ah!” he cried, laying both little hands on his breast, “How good that is! Dear boy, empty the water quickly from the pail into the earth brought from the woods, and I shall be free to lie under my dear ferns once more.”

Rob emptied the pail into the flower-pot. And as the last drop of water trickled from the bucket, with a glad cry that sounded like the tiniest of Indian war-whoops, the Fairy leaped into the moist little dell which the ferns made, and curled up against one of the stalks, hugging it lovingly.

“Dear fern!” he cried. “Dear woodsy fern! How sweet you smell. Dear moss, how soft you are! Dear fragrant earth, made of dead leaves and all the ripe finished things of the forest! Oh, I am myself once more. Dear boy, you have made me very happy.”

“And you will live here with me in my chamber, always and always, dear Fairy?” begged Rob eagerly. “That will be so good! I shall be happy indeed to have you for my little neighbor. And I will never, never tell any one about you, nor let them disturb your green home.”

The Fairy looked at Rob and sighed. “Little friend,” he said, “I love you dearly. I would gladly make you happy. But I have yet one more thing to ask of you. Think of it! Even now I am shut under a White Man’s roof,--I, an Indian Fairy! So many years in a foreign wigwam, walled in a dark, skyless well! Oh! Let me go back to the green wood. Let me be free once more like the rabbits and the squirrels. Will you set me free, even though it means that you will never see me again?”

Rob looked at the Fairy and his lip trembled. “I hoped”--he began. But he took a long breath and said to himself, “I will not be selfish. I will be kind and do as I would be done by.” Then he spoke aloud. “Tell me how I may set you free, dear Fairy, and I will do it.”