I said to myself, I am in no hurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet.

And it did, too.
When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let down a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there was forty-one feet of water in it.

I called in a monk and asked: "How deep is the well ?" "That, sir, I wit not, having never been told." "How does the water usually stand in it ?" "Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth, brought down to us through our predecessors." It was true--as to recent times at least--for there was witness to it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirty feet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unworn and rusty.

What had happened when the well gave out that other time?
Without doubt some practical person had come along and mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed the well would flow again.

The leak had befallen again now, and these children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolled their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blew away, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to drop a fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what was really the matter.