whenever you are in any difficulty just think of me. i am there with you ready to oblige you by all the means that i can. to tell you briefly how i came in here: three days ago i was roaming in yonder forest, when i saw a goldsmith passing through it. i chased him. he, finding it impossible to escape my claws, jumped into this well, and is living to this moment in the very bottom of it. i also jumped in, but found myself on the first ledge of the well; he is on the last and fourth ledge. in the second lives a serpent half-famished with hunger.