the winter time. Just now it had a new power of attraction for the
schoolboys. An old hermit-like fellow named Clay Dobbins had lived for
years at the other side of the hill. He owned a little patch of ground and
a dilapidated house. His wife had died recently, and all the village knew
of his two chronic complaints.

The first was that "Sairey had died leaving a sight less money than he had
expected," and old Dobbins had wondered if the lawyers or the speculators
had got it.

The second was that the old man had got nervous and lonely living in the
isolated spot. So he had rented a hut the other side of Bolter's Hill, near
the schoolhouse. He planned to have his house moved there, and intended
starting a little candy and notion store.

There had never been much house-moving in Tipton, and nobody in the village
was equipped to undertake even the simple task of conveying the Dobbins
dwelling uphill and then down again. A house-moving firm from Pentonville,
however, had engaged to perform the work. They had jacked up the house on
screws, chained it securely to a log frame, and, setting a portable
windlass at the top of the hill, operated this by horse power.

An immense rope cable, thick as a man's arm, ran to a pulley under the
house. It was a novelty to the school youngsters to watch the horse go
round and round the windlass, and to see the house come up the hill a slow
inch at a time.

Work on the moving had been suspended for the day, but the boys hung around
the spot. They raced through the house, clambered over the moving frame,
and knocked with the workmen's mallets on the rollers to make the hollow