over it. He saw the corn go in by the hopper into the trough which was
the real hopper, for it kept constantly hopping to shake the corn down
through a hole in the middle of the upper stone, which went round and
round against the lower, so that between them they ground the corn to
meal, which, in the story beneath, he saw pouring, a solid stream like
an avalanche, from a wooden spout. But the best of it all was the wheel
outside, and the busy rush of the water that made it go. So Willie would
now make a water-wheel.


[Illustration: WILLIE IS TAKEN TO SEE A WATER-WHEEL.]


The carpenter having given him a short lecture on the different kinds
of water-wheels, he decided on an undershot, and with Sandy's help
proceeded to construct it--with its nave of mahogany, its spokes of
birch, its floats of deal, and its axle of stout iron-wire, which, as
the friction would not be great, was to run in gudgeon-blocks of some
hard wood, well oiled. These blocks were fixed in a frame so devised
that, with the help of a few stones to support it, the wheel might be
set going in any small stream.

There were many tiny brooks running into the river, and they fixed upon
one of them which issued from the rising ground at the back of the
village: just where it began to run merrily down the hill, they
constructed in its channel a stonebed for the water-wheel--not by any
means for it to go to sleep in!

It went delightfully, and we shall hear more of it by and by. For the
present, I have only to confess that, after a few days, Willie got tired