the machine was used, the pedals soon unscrewed. Finally, young Anson cured this by drilling in and keying the pedals as well as screwing them to the axle.

This construction took all George's spare time and all the rainy Saturdays for nearly two years, so that it was not till he was nearly sixteen years old that he learned to ride his bicycle. But soon he was able to go along the road on the level and down hill pretty well, and he even made trips on it to the village a few times. He was so proud of these adventures that they more than repaid for the long walk up hill back again home, pushing the heavy hard-running wheel. He got a few nasty "headers" like others who rode high wheels in those days, but none of them seriously hurt him, or the homemade bicycle.

CHAPTER VIII

DOWN BY THE BROOK

GEORGE ANSON and his city cousin, Paul James, used to have great times together on the big Anson farm in summer. One year they made a great pearshaped kite, six feet tall, that pulled so hard when it got high up where the wind blows a gale that one day, with all their strong cord, they nearly lost it. If it had not pulled them near an apple tree, about which Paul had the quick wit to take a turn with the cord, they would soon have had to let go. But with one boy holding the kite by the tree, and the other taking in slack cord little by little whenever the wind died. away, they finally got it down. After that they used a wheelbarrow turned bottom up, winding the cord on the wheel shaft. In this way the spokes of the wheel could be used as levers to draw down the kite, however strong the wind.

Paul's vacation usually lasted a few weeks after George had to go back to school. This used to break up their fun a good deal. But Paul would go to the George at the door the

schoolhouse so as to meet moment school was over. There were two brothers who attended school who were almost exactly of the

The big boys One day early

same age as George and Paul, and there was quite a rivalry between them and the cousins. liked to stir up a scrap between them. in October they had a tremendous battle with hard apples from a tree near the schoolhouse. George was by far the best thrower of the four, but the two brothers had so much Irish grit that they never knew when they ought to be beaten, and returned to the charge again and again. Sometimes one party controlled the tree, sometimes the other, but soon the apples had been thrown so far that possession of the tree made little difference. Some one found a potato which proved a fine missile, for it was much heavier for its size than the apples, and could be thrown straighter and would hit harder. All four boys grew angrier and angrier as the obstinate battle raged, but the big boys enjoyed it hugely. The end came at last in a practical draw, because both the brothers and George began to get so much worried by thinking what their folks would say if the cows were not gotten up from the pasture by dark that they finally agreed to separate without a victory.

George and Paul had most fun down by the brook which flowed from near the Anson house to the ice pond, a quarter of a mile away. It flowed through the edge of a pasture, and was lined by maple and birch trees part of the way. Near the place where the brook flowed from the pasture into the mowing field, quite out of sight of the house, were several trees that made a pleasant shade, overhanging the

brook, which at that point had rather quick-sloping banks, though not a very swift fall.

Here the boys built a dam of stones and dirt. First they laid a wall of stones right across the brook. In the middle of it they built a square tube three inches in diameter made of boards. This was to be the flume for their water mill. When the stone wall had reached a height of a couple of feet they began to back it up on the upstream side with sods and with mud shoveled out of the bottom of the brook above the dam. It was pretty hard work to dig up the sods because the pasture was so full of ferns and brakes and bushes that one could hardly put the shovel down without being stopped by roots. An old ax helped some, and gradually they made good progress on the dam.

The water backed up more and more, getting deeper and deeper till it formed quite a sizable pond, deep enough to make wading lots of fun. Once or twice they tore away a channel in the middle of the dam, after the pond was full, for the fun of seeing the big outrush of the water. They wished they could get the pond big and deep enough to swim in, but the place was hardly suited for that, because the dam would have to be too long. As they built it higher leaks began to show under the dam and around its ends. Try as they would, they never were able to stop these. Probably there were porous places along the tree and brake roots that ran pretty far back into the pond. They soon found that it is absolutely of no use to try

to stop such a leak by plastering mud or sods on the downstream side of the dam where the leaks showed plainly. It would be only a few minutes before such work was washed out by the force of the water. Το stop a leak it was necessary to find its upper end, and this was very hard to do.

One of their uses for the pond was to sail small boats upon it. They made a fine schooner out of a half of a four-foot stick of white birch cordwood. This stick had been formed by splitting in halves a tree trunk about six inches in diameter. George and Paul, therefore, had a half-round piece six inches wide and two feet long. With a mallet and chisel they hollowed it out till the shell remaining was no more than a half-inch thick. They tapered and carved the ends into the shape of a boat, made a rudder, set masts and a bowsprit, and schooner-rigged their craft as well as they could copy some old pictures they found.

With George at one end of the pond and Paul at the other, they sent the schooner back and forth by setting the rudder properly. They would play they were merchants in New York and Hongkong. From New York they sent out machinery represented by stones and sticks, and from Hongkong they returned tea represented by fern leaves.

However, nothing interested them so long as their sawmill. The flume, of course, had been made with a wooden gate which was a well-fitting board resting against the upper end of the wooden tube which penetrated the dam. It could be raised little by little