It was turned by a stream from the spout of the pump. The axle, which they made out of the stem of a cherry-tree, cost them a good deal of trouble:— “We attempted to connect our machinery by means of a crank with the handle of the pump, expecting that if we once gave it a start the water would turn the wheel, while this would not only work the forge, but also maintain, by its operation on the pump, the stream necessary to its own movement. In short, we looked for a perpetual motion, and were greatly disappointed to find motion at an end as soon as our own hands were withdrawn from the pump. When we mentioned our perplexity to my father, after informing us that our attempt was hopeless, and giving us such explanation as we could understand, he consoled us under our discomfiture by telling us that many persons, much older and wiser than ourselves, had expended time, labour, and money, in the same fruitless quest.”[22] A few years after this his father himself came across one of these dreamers. He was taken by a friend to see a machine for producing perpetual motion. The inventor boasted of his success. “_There_,” he said, “the machine is.” “Does it go?” the visitor asked. “No, it does not go, but I will defy all the world to show _why_ it does not go.” The lads happily had a fair supply of tools. Their father, in his boyhood, had been fond of using them, and had kept some of them so carefully that they were quite serviceable for his sons. In three old looms that had belonged to their grandfather they found an abundant supply of materials. Their life at Horsehills, if somewhat hard, was far from being unhappy. A few years after they had left the neighbourhood, Rowland and his elder brothers passed through Wolverhampton on the top of a stagecoach. At a certain point of the road the three boys stood up in order to get a glimpse of their old home. A gentleman seated by them, on learning what they were gazing at, said, “to our no small gratification,” as Rowland remembered, “that we must have been good lads when we lived there, since we were so fond of the place.” CHAPTER II.