The stalwart farmer and his two assistants began to heave with all their might, while old Mr. Bell encouraged them. Before long, by dint of hard exertions, they succeeded in dragging Roy to the surface, and dripping and shivering he could stand once more in the blessed air and sunlight.
"But how in the world did you come to get in there?" asked the farmer, as he paced along by the side of the hermit's little cart, in which the half-exhausted Roy had been placed.
"Well," said the lad with a rather shamefaced laugh, "I'm really half ashamed to say. But it was this way. Some bad men who have an interest in putting me out of an aeroplane contest, of which Mr. Bell knows, had run off with me in an automobile. It was wrecked, and I escaped. I struck out toward town, as I thought, but as I came through that patch of woods by the wall I saw something that startled me so much that I stepped back and fell down the well."
"What did you see, my lad?" asked the farmer with half a twinkle in his eye.
"Something like a story-book ghost," smiled Roy; "it was tall and all in white and clanked a chain."
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared the farmer; "I half suspected as much. Why, that ghost was my old white mule Boxer. He managed somehow to snap his chain last night and we found him careening around the fields this morning. Don't color up, my boy," for poor Roy's face had turned very red, as the hired men guffawed loudly; "older men than you have been startled at far less. And now, here's the farm, and I'll bet mommer has a fine breakfast all ready for you."
The half-famished boy ate hungrily of the substantial farmhouse fare Mrs. Ingalls provided for him, and as he ate he made inquiries about the distance to the aviation grounds, which, he found to his dismay, were further distant than he had imagined.
"I'll never be able to make it in time without an automobile," moaned Roy to himself; "what shall I do?"
He cast about in his mind for some way out of his difficulty, but he could find none. Nor could the farmer help him. There were no automobiles in that part of the country, and in a horse-drawn vehicle he would never be able to make it in time.
All at once a queer sound filled the air. The atmosphere seemed to vibrate with it as it does on a still summer day when a threshing machine is buzzing away in a distant field.