e some
gladiator fitting his weapon before doing battle with the fiery monster
wreathing upwards above his head, as he screwed on the glistening copper
branch.

"Ready!" he roared, as Will's father and Josh came out of the open
office door laden with heavy ledgers.

"All right!" shouted Will. "Now, boys, all together--pump!"

Cling, clang! Cling, clang! Cling clang! Three times over, the
handles rose and fell with a strange, weird sound, and then, as if moved
by one impulse, the workers stopped, and, sounding strangely
incongruous, a man whose voice was blurred by the north-west country
burr shouted--

"Why, t'owd poomp wean't soock!"

"Nay," cried another; "I never had no faith in t'owd mawkin of a thing.
She's only fit to boon the roads."

"What's the matter?" shouted Manners.

"I don't know," cried Will, despondently; "it won't go."

"Are the pipes screwed on right?" said Manners.

"Yes."

"Is your end down in the water?"

"Yes; three or four feet."

"We must have got something screwed on upside down."

"No," said Will, firmly; "it's all right, just as old Boil O put it
together when it was done."

"But it isn't all right," cried Manners; "the suckers or something must
have been left out."

"Oh, why didn't we try it? Why didn't we try it when it was done?"
groaned Will. "I did want to, but Boil O said there was no time for me
to be playing my games."

At that moment Mr Willows ran up.

"Well," he cried, "why don't you pump?"

"We did, father, but it won't go."

"Then don't waste time. Here, Manners!"

"Catch hold," shouted the artist, thrusting the copper branch into the
nearest man hands and running up.

"Yes!" he said.

"Ladders and buckets," continued Mr Willows.

"Right, and form a double line. I say," he whispered; "here's
treachery."

"I fear so; I fear so," said Willows, in the same tone. "It's revenge,
and the engine has been purposely left out of gear. No," he cried, as
if in agony, his words having given him intense pain; "I won't believe a
man could be so base."

There was the scuffling rush of feet just then, and the object of his
thoughts, wild and weird-looking from his dwarfish aspect, glistening
head, and staring eyes, dashed up.

"Here, fools! Idiots! Are you going to let the poor old mill burn
down?"

"Hurrah!" shouted Will; "here's Boil O! Here, old fellow, what is there
wrong? I can't get the thing to go."

"Stand aside!" cried the man, fierce