They said that in the old day its bottom was below the level of the Neckar, hence the water-supply was inexhaustible.
But there were some who believed it had never been a well at all, and was never deeper than it is now--eighty feet; that at that depth a subterranean passage branched from it and descended gradually to a remote place in the valley, where it opened into somebody's cellar or other hidden recess, and that the secret of this locality is now lost.
Those who hold this belief say that herein lies the explanation that Dilsberg, besieged by Tilly and many a soldier before him, was never taken: after the longest and closest sieges the besiegers were astonished to perceive that the besieged were as fat and hearty as ever, and were well furnished with munitions of war--therefore it must be that the Dilsbergers had been bringing these things in through the subterranean passage all the time.
The children said that there was in truth a subterranean outlet down there, and they would prove it.

So they set a great truss of straw on fire and threw it down the well, while we leaned on the curb and watched the glowing mass descend.

It struck bottom and gradually burned out.

No smoke came up.

The children clapped their hands and said: "You see! Nothing makes so much smoke as burning straw--now where did the smoke go to, if there is no subterranean outlet ?" So it seemed quite evident that the subterranean outlet indeed existed.
But the finest thing within the ruin's limits was a noble linden, which the children said was four hundred years old, and no doubt it was.