he
water was falling in sheets upon him, and flooding the floor, dashed
back from the vault, against which it rushed from the top of the pipe.
This was enough for the present; he raised the sluice and let the water
escape again below. It was plain, from the force with which the water
struck the vault, that it would yet rise much higher.

He scrambled now on the top of the vault, and, examining the ruins, soon
saw how a pipe brought up through the breach in the vault could be led
to the hole in the wall of his room which he had shown his father as a
ventilator. But he would not have a close pipe running through his room.
There would be little good in that. He could have made a hole in it,
with a stopper, to let the water out when he wanted to use it, but that
would be awkward, while all the pleasure lay in seeing the water as it
ran. Therefore he got Mr Spelman to find him a long small pine tree,
which he first sawed in two, lengthways, and hollowed into two troughs;
then, by laying the small end of one into the wide end of the other, he
had a spout long enough to reach across the room, and go through the
wall on both sides.

The chief difficulty was to pierce the other wall, for the mortar was
very hard. The stones, however, just there were not very large, and,
with Sandy's help, he managed it.

The large end of one trough was put through the ventilator-hole, and the
small end of the other through the hole opposite; their second ends met
in the middle, the one lying into the other, and were supported at the
juncture by a prop.

They filled up the two openings round the ends with lime and small
stones, making them as tidy as they could, and fitting small slides by
which Willie could close up the passages for the water when he pleased.
Nothing remained but to solder a lead pipe into the top of the iron one,
guide this flexible tube across the ups and downs of the ruins, and lay
the end of it into the trough.

At length Willie took his stand at the sluice, and told Sandy to
scramble up to the end of the lead pipe, and shout when the water began
to pour into the trough. His object was to find how far the sluice
required to be shut down in order to send up just as much water as the
pipe could deliver. More than that would cause a pressure which might
strain, and perhaps burst, their apparatus.

He pushed the sluice down a little, and waited a moment.

"Is it coming yet, Sandy?" he cried.

"Not a drop," shouted Sand