king nothing about it, all at once
it struck him that he had another motive power at his command, and the
thought had hardly entered his mind, before he saw also how it was
possible to turn it to account. His motive power was the stream from the
Prior's Well, and the means of using it for his purpose stood on a shelf
in the ruins, in the shape of the toy water-wheel which he had laid
aside as distressingly useless. He set about the thing at once.

First of all, he made a second bit of channel for the stream, like a
little loop to the first, so that he could, when he pleased, turn a part
of the water into it, and let it again join the principal channel a
little lower down. This was, in fact, his mill-race. Just before it
joined the older part again, right opposite his window, he made it run
for a little way in a direct line towards the house, and in this part
of the new channel he made preparations for his water-wheel. Into the
channel he laid a piece of iron pipe, which had been lying about useless
for years; and just where the water would issue in a concentrated rush
from the lower end of it, he constructed a foundation for his wheel,
similar to that Sandy and he had built for it before. The water, as it
issued from the pipe, should strike straight upon its floats, and send
it whirling round. It took him some time to build it, for he wanted this
to be a good and permanent job. He had stones at command: he had a
well, he said, that yielded both stones and water, which was more than
everybody could say; and in order to make it a sound bit of work, he
fetched a lump of quick-lime from the kiln, where they burned quantities
of it to scatter over the clay-soil, and first wetting it with water
till it fell into powder, and then mixing it with sand which he riddled
from the gravel he dug from the garden, he made it into good strong
mortar. When its bed was at length made for it, he took the wheel and
put in a longer axis, to project on one side beyond the gudgeon-block,
or hollow in which it turned; and upon this projecting piece he fixed a
large reel. Then, having put the wheel in its place, he asked his father
for sixpence, part of which he laid out on a large ball of pack-thread.
The outside end of the ball he fastened to the reel, then threw the
ball through the open window into his room, and there undid it from the
inside end, laying the thread in coils on the floor. When it was time to
go to bed, he ran out and turned th