ix men
working around the edge of the cellar building the wall.

In part of the cellar the wall had been begun and was about two feet
high; but in another part there was nothing but the smooth dirt at the
bottom, and the smooth sides of the cellar that went straight up.

And two of the men were digging a trench in the smooth bottom of the
cellar where the wall would be.

When they had the shallow trench dug for a few feet, one of the men
put down his shovel and went to the pile of stones.

And he found some stones that were the size he wanted, each of them
just about as big as he could carry in one hand. And he took two of
these and went to the trench and put them in.

Then he went to the pile and got two more, and he put them in the
trench, too. And so he did until the bottom of the trench was all
covered.

Then he got smaller stones and threw them in on top of the bigger ones;
and, on top of those, still smaller stones that were flattish.

The flat stones filled the trench up nearly to the top, and he didn't
put in any more but took up his shovel again and helped the other man
dig.

Then two of the other men came, and they looked at the trench to see
if it was all right.

Then they went to the pile of big stones and they picked out one of
the biggest, and they took their big iron crowbars and put the points
of the bars under the stone, to move it.

The little boy wondered.

"What are they going to do?" he asked. "Are they going to move it? Can
they move it?"

The man nodded.

"Easy enough," he said. "You watch."

And the men pried with their crowbars, and the big stone started from
its place and rolled down from the pile. And the men got it over to
the trench, sometimes prying it with their crowbars and sometimes
rolling it with their hands, and they set it in its place on top of
the small flat stones.

Then one of the men shut one of his eyes and squinted along the wall
that was done to see if the stone was just in the right place; and the
other man moved the stone with his crowbar just a little until it was
in exactly the right place.

Then they went to the pile again and got another big stone in the same
way, and they got it over to the trench and set it in its place beside
the first.

Then the men went to the pile again, and they picked out a stone that
was nearly as big as the bottom stones, and they hammered it with
great hammers and split off some thin, flat pieces.

That was to make i