"Oh, no," said he. "I have planned the thing better than that. You see, the greater the weight the greater the power and the velocity. Now, if you take a solid cylinder of lead about four inches in diameter, so that it would slip easily down your pipe,--you might grease it, for that matter,--and twenty feet in length, it would be an enormous weight, and in slowly descending for about an hour a day--for that would be long enough for your pumping--and going down a thousand feet, it would run your engine for a year. Now, then, at the end of the year you could not expect to haul that weight up again. You would have a trigger arrangement which would detach it from the rope when it got to the bottom. Then you would wind up your rope,--a man could do that in a short time,--and you would attach another cylinder of lead, and that would run your engine for another year, minus a few days, because it would only go down nine hundred and eighty feet. The next year you would put on another cylinder, and so on. I have not worked out the figures exactly, but I think that in this way your engine would run for thirty years before the pipe became entirely filled with cylinders. That would be probably as long as you would care to have water forced into the house." "Yes"' said I, "I think that is likely." He saw that his scheme did not strike me favorably. Suddenly a light flashed across his face. "I tell you what you can do with your pipe," he said, "just as it is. You can set up a clock over it which would run for forty years without winding." I smiled, and he turned sadly away to his horse; but he had not ridden ten yards before he came back and called to me over the wall. "If the earth at the bottom of your pipe should ever yield to pressure and give way, and if water or gas, or--anything, should be squirted out of it, I beg you will let me know as soon as possible." I promised to do so. When the pounding was at an end my wife and child came home. But the season continued dry, and even their presence could not counteract the feeling of aridity which seemed to permeate everything which belonged to us, material or immaterial. We had a great deal of commiseration from our neighbors. I think even Mrs. Betty Perch began to pity us a little, for her spring had begun to trickle again in a small way, and she sent word to me that if we were really in need of water she would be willing to divide with us. Phineas Colwell was sorry for us, of course, but he could not help feeling and saying that if I had consulted him the misfortune would have been prevented. It was late in the summer when my wife returned, and when she made her first visit of inspection to the grounds and gardens, her eyes, of course, fell upon the unfinished well. She was shocked.