"It's a funny sort of well," he said, "Looks to me like something else. Did you ever hear of oubliettes, Julia?"
Juliet, as she heard him, grew white with terror.
"Julia, Julia," she cried, "you won't let him throw me down there?"
"No, no," said Julia. "He would not. There is no reason.... Mark," she urged, "come away from here."
But he only laughed shortly.
"Don't be so hysterical," he said, and continued to bend his gaze upon the hole at the bottom of the slope. It seemed to have a sort of fascination for him. Finally he picked a piece of loose mortar from the wall and threw it down into the gap. A second later there was a dull sound which might have been a splash. "Perhaps it is a well after all. Did you think it sounded as if it had fallen into water?"
"Yes," said Julia, "I am sure it did. Do come away. I hate being here."
And indeed she was shivering from head to foot, and not Juliet herself seemed more anxious to leave the place.
"Just one more shot," said Mark. "Here, Julia, stoop down, and roll that bit of stone slowly down the slope, while I hold on to our prisoner. We shall hear better that way. Give me your lamp."
Anxious to satisfy him, Julia picked up the fragment he had knocked from the rough wall, and stooping down stretched out her hand to set the stone in motion. But, as she did so, Mark loosened his grip on Juliet, and bending quickly behind this poor girl who loved him seized her by the shoulders and threw her forward on to her face. The steep pitch of the floor finished what the impetus given by his onslaught had begun. Julia shot head first down the slope, and disappeared into the black chasm of the well.
One long agonized scream came up to them out of the darkness, and rolled its echoes through the lonely passages.
Then the distant sound of a splash; and silence.
Back against the wall, Juliet cowered, her whole body shaken by great sobs. She was petrified with terror of this fiendish man, but her fears for herself gave way before the horror of what she had seen.
"Oh, what have you done, what have you done?" she wept.
Mark tried to summon up a jeering smile. The lantern threw no light upon his white and twitching face.
"You don't suppose I meant to let her go free, after the taste she gave me of her temper?" he asked, in a voice he could not keep from shaking a little. "Do you suppose I like having to do these things? You women have never the slightest sense of common justice. The whole thing is perfectly beastly to me. But how could I live with a girl who would be ready to threaten me with the gallows every time she got out of bed wrong foot first? It's not fair to blame me for other people's faults."