"Then I got an idea.

"You know how a grain elevator works--a series of buckets on an endless
chain, running over two pulleys, just as a bicycle chain runs over two
sprockets? Very well. Up at the top of that tower I extended the hub of
the windmill back to form a shaft with big cogs. Down at the bottom of
the well there is another corresponding shaft with the same cogs. Over
the two, as you will see, runs an endless ladder of steel cable. Is that
clear?"

"I guess so," I said, wearily. "Go on."

"Well, that's as far as I have gone. Next week the buckets are coming. I
shall hitch one to each rung of the chain, or ladder, throw on the gear,
and let her go.

"The buckets will run down into the well upside down, come up on the other
side filled, run to the top of the tower, and dump the water into a
reservoir tank--and go down again. Thus I pump water without a pump--in
other words, with a pumpless pump!

"Simple! Efficient! Nothing to get out of order--no valves, no pistons, no
air-chambers--nothing whatever!" finished Hawkins triumphantly.

"Wonderful!" I said absently.

"Isn't it?" cried the inventor. "Now, do you want to look over it, to-day,
Griggs, or shall we run through those drawings of my new loom?"

Hawkins has invented a loom, too. I don't know much about machinery in