y feet. A slope
rose up in front of it, which accounted for the water being drained onto
this land. The water naturally would have run off the land into a brook
at the back. But in about the centre was a hollow, and beyond that the
ground rose a little, and then dropped toward the brook. The depression
made a kind of drain hole and the water settled there all the spring
through.

This strip of land of the boys was not by any means the entire piece of
land, which was much larger, but the boys' father had given them this
largely to try their mettle. He felt so certain they could not do it
that he said they might have all they needed from a pile of drain pipe
he intended to use himself on a piece of wet land the next fall. "I
shall have all my drain pipe left to me," he said to the boys' mother
one night. She smiled, for the boys had talked matters over a bit with
her.

Myron's strawberry bed was all made, Jack's garden-filling work done,
George's ploughing and planting finished, before the boys could lay the
drain.

"It's no use," said Albert, "I'm ready to give up."

"Now Savage, there's to be no quitting. I'd be ashamed of you, at least
we can surprise father."

"All right, Jay, I'm with you."

Finally the day came when The Chief and the boys started work. A drain
pipe should be laid ordinarily anywhere from twenty inches to three feet
deep. One may dig or plough to make the trench. It is wise to dig as
narrow a trench as possible and so lift as little soil as possible.
Then, too, the bed of the drain should slope gradually from the upper
or highest point to the lowest. The drop in level should be about four
inches per hundred feet. So the boys had to consider just this. This is
the way they "sighted" to get the drop in level. They drove a stake into
the ground at some twenty feet from the place where the drain was to
begin. Previously a cord had been stretched from one end of the centre
of the field to the other end. Since the centre of the field seemed to
be the place for the deposit of water the drain was to go directly
through the centre.

If you ever have a piece of draining to do the problem may not be so
simple as this. You may find several natural drainage areas. Then you
must lay drains through these. Or instead of separate drains make side
ones which empty into a main drain.

Going back again to the "sighting" for the drain bed level--the boys
have driven a stake into the ground. It stands five feet