to his father!

All through morning school, however, his thoughts would go back to the
little vault, so cool and shadowy, sheltering its ancient well from the
light that lorded it over all the country outside. No doubt the streams
rejoiced in it, but even for them it would be too much before the
evening came to cool and console them; while the slow wells in the
marshy ground up on the mountains must feel faint in an hour of its
burning eye. This well had always been, and always would be, cool and
blessed and sweet, like--like a precious thing you can only think about.
And wasn't it a nice thing to have a well of your own? Tibby needn't go
any more to the village pump--which certainly was nearer, but stood in
the street, not in their own ground. Of course, as yet, she could not
draw a bucketful, for the water hardly came above the stones; but he
would soon get out as many as would make it deep enough--only, if it was
all Sandy could do to get out the big ones, and that with his help too,
how was he to manage it alone? There was the rub!

I must go back a little to explain how he came to think of a plan.

After Hector and he had gone as far in Dr Dick's astronomy as they could
understand, they found they were getting themselves into what seemed
quite a jungle of planets, and suns, and comets, and constellations.

"It seems to me," said the shoemaker, "that to understand anything you
must understand everything."

So they laid the book aside for the present; and Hector, searching about
for another with which to fill up the remainder of the afternoon, came
upon one in which the mechanical powers were treated after a simple
fashion.

Of this book Willie had now read a good deal. I cannot say that he had
yet come to understand the mechanical power so thoroughly as to see
that the lever and the wheel-and-axle are the same in kind, or that the
screw, the inclined plane, and the wedge are the same power in different
shapes; but he did understand that while a single pulley gives you no
advantage except by enabling you to apply your strength in the most
effective manner, a second pulley takes half the weight off you. Hence,
with the difficulty in which he now found himself, came at once the
thought of a block with a pulley in it, which he had seen lying about
in the carpenter's shop. He remembered also that there was a great iron
staple or _eye_ in the vault just over the well; and if he could only
get hold of a second pulley