of the brook in his father's garden.

The more he looked at it now, the clearer he saw that it was high time
for that brook to be doing something.

It was easy enough to gather flat stones and pile them in at the narrow
place at the top of the fall. That was little more than a foot high, to
be sure, but the dam would more than double it.

Then he begged a couple of old raisin boxes at the store where his
father traded, and when the ends were knocked out of them, and they were
firmly set in the top of the little dam, one behind the other, they made
a good enough flume. The end of the foremost one stuck out beyond the
stones, and the water came pouring from it beautifully.

It took all the rest of that day for Mart to get the brook penned in and
compelled to run through the raisin boxes, for he had to keep on putting
stones and sods and dirt behind the dam to strengthen it, as the water
rose higher and higher. It would not do to make a pond of the garden,
but so long as the brook did not overflow its banks it would do no harm.
Sometimes it had run over in the spring, or after very heavy
rain-storms.

The next day Mart hardly went near his new dam, and he was a very
serious and busy boy indeed, considering that he was only thirteen.

A piece of wood had to be found first two and a half inches square, and
about a foot and a half long. It took a great deal of work to shave down
the four corners of that piece of wood till it had eight smooth sides
all just alike. Then Mart was compelled to go over to Jellicombe's
carpenter shop and put his piece of wood in a vise, so it would be held
steady, while he took a saw and sawed a long groove, more than half an
inch deep, in the middle of each one of those eight faces. Jellicombe
told him he had done that job very well.

"Looks like a hub for something. Going to make a wheel this time?"

"I'll show you. May I take your inch auger and bore a hole in each end?"

"Go ahead. If you ain't kerful, you'll split yer timber."

Mart was careful then, but he had trouble before him. He had picked out
a number of very straight shingles, and he was whittling away on these
now as if he was being paid for it. He cut them down to six inches long,
and shaved them at the sides, so that two pieces laid together were just
a foot wide. With a little more whittling after that he fitted them all,
one by one, into the eight grooves in his "hub," and his "water-wheel"
was done. A proud boy was Mart