ter fifteen minutes of it,
my wrists and temples would be pounding so I'd have to come down and
rest.

"Of course the purpose of this hole that I knocked through the
steeple-top was to make fast ropes and pulleys, so my partner and I
could hoist ourselves along the outside, and not have to climb up the
inside cross-beams, which, I can tell you, is a lively bit of athletics.
Well, we got our ropes fixed all right, about twenty-five feet below the
top, and the 'bosun's saddle' swung below for us to travel up and down
in, and then we made fast another set of ropes and pulleys about fifteen
feet higher up; this was for hoisting timber and stuff that we needed."

"How did you get up that fifteen feet?" I inquired.

"Worked up on the stirrups--that is, two nooses around the steeple, each
ending in a loop, one for the right foot, one for the left. You stand in
the right stirrup and work the left loop up, then you stand in the left
stirrup and work the right loop up. Sometimes in hard places you have to
throw your nooses around the shaft as a cowboy casts a rope. Come down
some day and watch us work; you'll see the whole thing."

To this invitation I gave glad acceptance; I certainly wished to see
this stirrup-climbing process.

[Illustration: "SOMETIMES IN HARD PLACES YOU HAVE TO THROW YOUR NOOSES
AROUND THE SHAFT."]

"The next thing," continued Merrill, "was to make another hole in the
steeple through a keystone a little below our first hole. In this hole
we set a block of Norway pine resting on an iron jack. The block was
about a foot square and twenty-two inches high, a big tough piece, you
see, and by screwing up the jack we could make that part as solid as the
keystone was. We made this hole on the east side of the steeple, which
was the side we wanted her to fall on, the only side she could fall on
without injuring something; and we had it figured out so close that we
dug a trench on that side straight out from the steeple's base, ten feet
wide and four feet deep, and told people we intended to have the whole
top of that steeple, say a length of thirty-five feet and a weight of
thirty-five tons, come off at one time and land right square in that
trench and nowhere else. That's what we intended to do.

"Now began the hoisting of materials; first a lot of half-inch wire
cable, enough for four turns around the steeple, then eight sixteen-foot
timbers, two inches thick and a foot wide, then a lot of maple wedges.
We