ine raised his pickaxe high above his
head, and the next man did the same, and then the third man, and so on
to the other end of the line.

And the first man struck his pickaxe down hard into the ground, and it
made the ground grunt, _Mnh!_

And the second man did the same, and the ground gave another grunt,
_Mnh!_

And then the third man did the same thing, and so on to the other end
of the line.

Then the first man was ready again, so that the sound of the pickaxes
was as regular as the ticking of the tall clock.

When the pickaxe was in the ground, each man gave a kind of a pry that
loosened the dirt.

And when they had picked, the men went ahead a little short step and
picked a new place and left the loosened dirt behind, so that, pretty
soon, they were walking on the dirt that they had loosened.

The cat had got tired of lying between the little boy's feet and
having no attention paid to her, so she got up and ran off a little
way, and stopped and looked back, but the little boy wouldn't look.

So she walked back, with her bushy tail straight up in the air, and
rubbed against the little boy's legs.

Still the little boy didn't notice her. And the reason why he didn't
notice her was that the horses were being hitched to the big iron
scoop.

As soon as the horses were hitched to the scoop, they started walking
along; and the scoop turned right over on its face, upside down,
because the man didn't have hold of the handles.

And the horses dragged the scoop, upside down, and it bumped over the
stones and made a ringing kind of noise, and they dragged it in
between the boards and over the dirt that had been loosened by the
pickaxes, and when they got to the end of the loosened dirt, they
stopped.

[Illustration: THE DIRT-SCOOP]

Then the man turned the horses around, and he took hold of the handles
of the scoop and turned it over; and he kept hold of the handles, and
the horses started, and the scoop dug into the loose dirt and scooped
it right up and carried it along.

Now the field, where they were digging the cellar, sloped down behind
where the cellar was to be, so that, when the horses came to that part,
they were walking down-hill.

And the man let go of the handles of the scoop, and it turned over and
dumped its load of dirt.

And when the horses heard the scoop bumping and banging on the ground,
they turned around of their own accord and walked back to get a new
load.

And so they did un