The next day his neighbor was grinding cider at his ramshackle water mill--one of the operations for which a week must be set aside every fall. Perkins sat on a log and listened to the crunch-crunch of the apples in the chute, and the drip of the frothy yellow liquid that fell into waiting buckets. "How much power have you got here?" he asked. "Thirty or forty horsepower, I guess." "What do you do with it, besides grinding cider to pickle your neighbors' digestion with?" "Nothing much. I've got a planer and a moulding machine in there, to work up jags of lumber occasionally. That's all. This mill was a chair-factory in my grandfather's day, back in 1830." "Do you use it thirty days in a year?" "No; not half that." "What are you going to do with it this winter?" "Nothing; I keep the gate open and the wheel turning, so it won't freeze, but nothing else. I am going to take the family to Texas to visit my wife's folks for three months. We've worked hard enough to take a vacation." "Will you rent me the mill while you are gone?" "Go ahead; you can have it for nothing, if you will watch the ice." "All right; let me know when you come back and I'll drive to town and bring you home." * * * * * Three months went by, and one day in February the city man, in response to a letter, hitched up and drove to town to bring his neighbor back home. It was four o'clock in the afternoon when they started out, and it was six--dark--when they turned the bend in the road to the farm house. They helped the wife and children out, with their baggage, and as Perkins opened the door of the house, he reached up on the wall and turned something that clicked sharply. Instantly light sprang from everywhere. In the barn-yard a street lamp with an 18-inch reflector illuminated all under it for a space of 100 feet with bright white rays of light. Another street lamp hung over the watering trough. The barn doors and windows burst forth in light. There was not a dark corner to be found anywhere. In the house it was the same. Perkins led the amazed procession from room to room of the house they had shut up for the winter. On the wall in the hall outside of every room was a button which he pushed, and the room became as light as day before they entered. The cellar door, in opening, automatically lighted a lamp illuminating that cavern as it had never been lighted before since the day a house was built over it. Needless to say, the farmer and his family were reduced to a state of speechlessness. "How the deuce did you do it?" finally articulated the farmer. "I put your idle water wheel to work," said Perkins; and then, satisfied with this exhibition, he put them back in the sleigh and drove to his home, where his wife had supper waiting.