When Willie was a tiny boy, he had gone once with Farmer Thomson's man
and a load of corn to see the mill; and the miller had taken him all
over it. He saw the corn go in by the hopper into the trough which was
the real hopper, for it kept constantly hopping to shake the corn down
through a hole in the middle of the upper stone, which went round and
round against the lower, so that between them they ground the corn to
meal, which, in the story beneath, he saw pouring, a solid stream like
an avalanche, from a wooden spout. But the best of it all was the wheel
outside, and the busy rush of the water that made it go. So Willie would
now make a water-wheel.
[Illustration: WILLIE IS TAKEN TO SEE A WATER-WHEEL.]
The carpenter having given him a short lecture on the different kinds
of water-wheels, he decided on an undershot, and with Sandy's help
proceeded to construct it--with its nave of mahogany, its spokes of
birch, its floats of deal, and its axle of stout iron-wire, which, as
the friction would not be great, was to run in gudgeon-blocks of some
hard wood, well oiled. These blocks were fixed in a frame so devised
that, with the help of a few stones to support it, the wheel might be
set going in any small stream.
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