Page:The Boys of Bellwood School.djvu/39

Rh and lonely living in the isolated spot. So he had rented a hut the other side of Bolter's Hill, near the schoolhouse. He planned to have his house moved there, and intended starting a little candy and notion store.

There had never been much house-moving in Tipton, and nobody in the village was equipped to undertake even the simple task of conveying the Dobbins dwelling uphill and then down again. A house-moving firm from Pentonville, however, had engaged to perform the work. They had jacked up the house on screws, chained it securely to a log frame, and, setting a portable windlass at the top of the hill, operated this by horse power.

An immense rope cable, thick as a man's arm, ran to a pulley under the house. It was a novelty to the school youngsters to watch the horse go round and round the windlass, and to see the house come up the hill a slow inch at a time.

Work on the moving had been suspended for the day, but the boys hung around the spot. They raced through the house, clambered over the moving frame, and knocked with the workmen's mallets on the rollers to make the hollow echo that was new to them and sounded like music.

The house movers had set the windlass locked, and the strain on the rope brought it taut. The house was anchored about half way up the hill,