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The Story of Iron

BY

ELIZABETH I. SAMUEL

Author of
“The Story of Gold and Silver”
ILLUSTRATED BY
VELMA T. SIMKINS

THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA
1920

COPYRIGHT
1914 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY

To
P. K. P.

Contents

Illustrations

THE STORY OF IRON

CHAPTER I
BILLY BRADFORD

“I wisht,” said Billy Bradford, standing, hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, in the middle of the path, and looking across the broad river at the mountains beyond, “I wisht——”

“William Wallace, come here,” called a voice from the door where the path ended. “It’s time for you to start with your uncle’s dinner.”

Billy turned quickly, drew his hands out of his pockets, and in a moment was at the door.

Billy Bradford might stand still, looking away off at the mountains, and wish, but William Wallace was quite another boy. There had been a time when Billy hadn’t felt that there were two of him. Then he had lived in the country. That was before the day that his father, hand on Billy’s head, had smiled at him for the last time, saying, “Billy, my little man.”

Then Uncle John had drawn him gently away, and Aunt Mary had kissed him, and they had brought him to the little house by the river.

That was two long years ago. Now, William Wallace had to carry dinners, six dinners a week, to the big foundry, a whole mile away. That was why there seemed to be two of him, one to do errands, and another to think.

“You must be very careful not to fall,” said Aunt Mary, as she gave him the bottle of soup, wrapped in two newspapers to keep it hot. Then she gave him the pail, saying, “Uncle John will work better all the afternoon because you are carrying him a hot dinner.”

“I shall be glad of that,” said Billy, looking up at her and smiling, as he always did, when he was doing anything for Uncle John.

Aunt Mary herself liked to do things for Uncle John, so she smiled back, at least she thought she did; but she didn’t know so much about smiles as Billy did. He had been used to the kind that go all over a face and end in wrinkles everywhere.

Billy’s smile lasted till Aunt Mary said, “Now hurry, William Wallace.”

That stopped his smile, but he settled the bundle a little more carefully under his arm and started on his way.

The day was warm, even for June. Part of the way there wasn’t any pavement, and, where there was, it was very rough; so, while he was walking along, Billy had plenty of time to think. He had a great many things to think about, too, for his birthday was coming the very next day, and then he would be thirteen years old.

The thing that was most on his mind was what he could do to earn some money. He was thinking especially about that, because, the night before, when they had supposed that he was asleep in the little corner room, he had heard Aunt Mary say that the money in the bank was getting very low. Then Uncle John had said, “Sh! sh! Billy may hear.”

June made Billy want to be out in the country. Things were so mixed up that he couldn’t seem to straighten them out at all, but he trudged steadily on, because the William Wallace part of him always kept at things. Finally he gave up thinking and whistled hard, just to help his legs along.

At last he turned the corner, and there was the great mill with the square tower almost in the middle; and, at the right, the long, low building with the tall smoke-stack. That was the foundry where Uncle John worked.

Billy went through the wide gate just as the whistle blew; and, in a minute, he could see Uncle John come to the door. He didn’t look as if he had been working all the morning in damp, black sand. The men in the foundry said that dirt never stuck to John Bradford. “Clean John Bradford,” they called him. Clean and good he looked to Billy, as he stood there in his bright blue overalls and the gray cap that was almost the color of his hair.

“Hot soup, sir,” said Billy, handing him the bundle.

“Sure to be hot, if you bring it,” said Uncle John, his blue eyes smiling down at Billy. “Might burn a boy, if he fell and broke the bottle, eh, Billy, my lad?”

“Pail, sir,” said Billy, his eyes growing bright, until he smiled so hard that he forgot all about his troubles.

Somehow Uncle John seemed to understand a great many things. Even if it was only the risk that a boy took in carrying a bottle of hot soup, it made Billy feel comfortable to have him understand.

“Now,” said Uncle John, “we’ll go out back of the mill, and have a good talk. Been doing anything this morning, Billy?”

Then Billy told him about the errands that he had done for Aunt Mary and about his hoeing the two rows of potatoes out by the fence.

“Well done, Billy,” said Uncle John. “Here’s a bench waiting for us. Had your own dinner?”

Billy nodded. Then he said, “Uncle John, do you like to work in the foundry?”

“As to that,” answered Uncle John, taking a sandwich from the pail, “I do. It’s hard work, and it doesn’t make a man rich; but there’s something about making things that keeps a man interested. It takes a pretty good eye and a steady hand to make the molds come out just right. They have to be right, you see; for, if they weren’t, things wouldn’t fit together. I like to think that I’m helping things in the world to go right.

“Just why are you asking me that? Can it be that you’re thinking of being a man, Billy?

“Something’s going to happen to-morrow,” he continued, looking very wise. “I’ve been thinking we’d better celebrate.”

“Celebrate!” exclaimed Billy.

“Yes,” said Uncle John, nodding his head emphatically. “Just as soon as I’ve finished this good dinner, we’ll go to the office to get permission for you to come to see me work, and to wait until we pour.”

“Honest?” said Billy, for he had wanted and wanted to see how iron could ever be poured out of a ladle. “Honest and true?”

“Honest and true,” said Uncle John, as he handed Billy one of the molasses cookies that Aunt Mary always put in the bottom of the pail.

“Ready,” said Uncle John, putting the cover on his pail.

Back they went to the foundry, then across the yard, and past lame Tom, the timekeeper, down the narrow corridor to the office where they found the young superintendent at his desk.

“Why, Bradford,” he said rising, and looking at Billy so hard that it made his cheeks feel hot, “why, Bradford, I didn’t know that you had a son.”

“I haven’t a son, sir,” said John Bradford. “This is my nephew, William Wallace Bradford.”

Billy’s cheeks cooled off very fast, and his heart seemed to move down in his side; for it was the very first time that Uncle John had ever called him by his whole name.

“You couldn’t deny that he belongs to you, even if you wanted to,” said the superintendent, “for his eyes are a real Bradford blue. Anything like you except his eyes?” he added quizzically.

“I’m glad that he belongs to me, Mr. Prescott,” answered John Bradford, putting his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “He’s a good boy, too. Can’t say just what I was, when I was thirteen.”

“There’s some difference between a boy and a man, I’ll admit,” said the superintendent; “but what I’m driving at is that I need an office boy, this very minute, and I should like a Bradford boy. What do you say, Bradford?”

“Eh, Billy, my lad?” said Uncle John.

Even in the moment that they had been standing there, something in the tall, broad-shouldered man, who looked earnestly down at him, had touched Billy’s hero-spring. As soon as he heard the question, he knew that he wanted to be Mr. Prescott’s office boy. So, forgetting all about his birthday and everything else, he said, with his William Wallace promptness, “I’ll begin right away, sir.”

“Well then, William,” said the superintendent, in his firm, business tone, “as my office boy, you must keep your eyes and your ears open, and your lips shut. Understand?”

Then, before Billy could answer, Mr. Prescott gave him a letter, saying, “Post that on the train.”

Billy darted through the door, and the superintendent sat down at his desk.

“Thank you, sir,” said John Bradford; and, just then, the whistle blew.

Billy did more errands that afternoon than he had ever done in a whole day; several times he had to put on extra whistle power to keep his legs going. But he was proud and happy that night when they told Aunt Mary the news. He saw the look of relief that came into her face; and, though that made him glad, it made him a little sorry, too.

After supper he went out in the path to look once more at the mountains growing dim and blue in the summer twilight. He knew, now, what he had not known in the morning; and that was, how he was going to help to take care of himself.

He stood there until his aunt called, “William Wallace, it’s time to come in.”

Then his wish of the morning—the wish of his heart asserted itself once more; and, as he turned to go into the house, he said, half in a whisper:

“I wisht she’d call me Billy.”

CHAPTER II
OLD IRON

“Days don’t always come out as we expect they will,” said Uncle John, as he and Billy started out together the next morning. “But it’s your birthday, just the same. Shut your eyes and hold out your hand.”

“Ready.”

Billy, opening his eyes, saw his uncle holding a jack-knife, which dangled from a chain.

“Just what I wanted,” exclaimed Billy, taking the knife.

“Thought it would be handy for an office boy,” said Uncle John, beaming with satisfaction.

“I’m going,” said he, as Billy put his dinner pail down on the sidewalk and opened both blades, “to give you something else, something to carry around in your head, instead of in your pocket. It’s an office boy motto: Whatever you do, do it right, just as right as you can.”

“That isn’t any new news,” said Billy, looking rather disappointed; “you told me that a long time ago.”

“Come to think of it, I did,” said Uncle John. “It’s good for any boy, any time; but it’s specially good for an office boy. I should like to talk it over, but we shall have to hurry now.”

Together they went through the gate, and stood in line, while lame Tom, the timekeeper, made marks against their names. Then Uncle John said cheerily, “Meet me behind the mill when the noon whistle blows.”

“Sure, sir,” said Billy.

Billy went on, through the great door, down the narrow corridor, and had a “good-morning” all ready to say when he opened the office door. Of course he didn’t find anybody there. The office didn’t seem to be in very good order; but nobody had told him what he was expected to do.

So he looked around for a moment. Then he put his pail on a stool in the corner, and picked up a pencil that lay on the floor under Mr. Prescott’s desk. The point was broken. That made him think of his knife. Then he looked for a waste-basket, for Aunt Mary was very particular about not having shavings and lead on the floor. On the top of the waste-basket he found a duster. Billy knew a duster when he saw it, for dusting was one of the things that Aunt Mary had taught him to do.

When the pencil was done—it was very well done, for he used both blades of his knife to do it—he put it on top of Mr. Prescott’s desk, and began to dust in good earnest.

When the postman came in, he looked a little surprised, but all he said was:

“New boy, are you?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Billy.

Then he put the letters in one pile and the papers in another, and was putting a finishing touch with his duster on the rungs of Mr. Prescott’s chair when he came in.

Billy was so busy that he didn’t hear him till he said, “Good-morning, William.”

“Good-morning, sir. Where shall I empty the waste-basket?”

“Really,” said Mr. Prescott, “unexpected pleasure, I am sure—barrel outside.”

Billy had hoped that Mr. Prescott would notice how well he had sharpened the pencil; but he put it into his pocket without saying a word.

Perhaps he did see more than he seemed to, for, when the expressman came in with a package, Mr. Prescott said, “William, cut the string.”

When Billy took out his knife, Mr. Prescott glanced up from his papers, saying, “Unexpected pleasure, really.”

Billy was beginning to feel that being an office boy wasn’t a bit social, when Mr. Prescott said:

“William, why is a jack-knife called a jack-knife?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Frenchman named Jacques first made them,” said Mr. Prescott.

Billy wanted very much to tell him where his knife came from; but he didn’t feel sure that office boys were supposed to have birthdays.

Then the stenographer came; and, before Billy knew it, it was noon, and he went to meet Uncle John behind the mill.

“Birthday coming on pretty well, Billy?” asked Uncle John, as they both opened their pails.

“Sure,” answered Billy, who was so hungry that he couldn’t stop to talk.

“Sorry we couldn’t celebrate,” said Uncle John. “Mustn’t give up the idea though, Billy. As you go around on errands, you’ll see a good many things. Some day we’ll piece them together. Watch for a chance and it’ll come some day.”

Billy, fast nearing the bottom of his pail, paused a moment to say, “Uncle John, were you ever an office boy?”

“Not just that,” answered Uncle John.

“There’s a lot to it,” said Billy.

“I suppose there is,” said Uncle John, gravely. “There is to almost anything, if you do it right.”

After that, Billy’s days went on, one very like another. It seemed to him that there was no end to the things he had to learn. He had very little time to spend in wishing, though every night he went out for a good look at the mountains. But he was beginning to think about the kind of man that he would like to be; and every day he was a little more sure that he wanted to be like the young superintendent.

He was so short himself that he was afraid that he would never be as tall as Mr. Prescott. So he began to stand as tall as he could, especially when he was in the office. Then he tried to remember to breathe deep, the way that the teacher at school had told the boys to do. But he wondered, sometimes, when he looked at Mr. Prescott’s broad shoulders, whether he had ever been as small as most boys.

The day that Billy had his first little brown envelope with three dollars and fifty cents in it, he stood very tall indeed. That night, at supper, he handed it to Aunt Mary, saying:

“That’s for you to put in the bank.”

“For Billy,” said Uncle John, looking up quickly and speaking almost sternly. “I’m the one to give Aunt Mary money.”

Then he said gently: “It’s a good plan, Billy, to put your first money in the bank. You’ll never have any more just like that.”

The thing that first excited Billy’s curiosity, as he went about on errands, was the big pile of old iron in the mill yard. There were pieces of old stoves, and seats from schoolhouses that had been burned, and engines that had been smashed in wrecks, and old ploughs, and nobody knew what else—all piled up in a great heap.

One day, when he carried an order to the man that tended the furnace in the cupola where they melted the iron, he saw them putting pieces of old iron on the scales; and he heard the man say to his helper: “We shall have to put in fifty pounds extra to-day.”

It seemed to Billy that it wasn’t quite fair to put in old iron, when they were making new machinery. So, one noon, he asked Uncle John about it.

“Using your eyes, are you, Billy? That’s quite likely to set your mind to working.

“I suppose you’ve heard them talking around here about testing machinery. That isn’t the first testing. They test iron all the way along, from the ore in the mine to the sticks of pig iron piled up in our yard.”

“Some of it is in cakes,” said Billy.

“Is that so?” asked Uncle John, as he took another sandwich out of his pail. “Now I think of it, they did tell me that cakes are the new style in pig iron.

“Well,” continued Uncle John, “there are men testing and experimenting all the time; and some of them found out that old iron and pig iron together make better new iron than they can make from pig iron alone. Since they found that out, scrap iron has kept on going up in price.

“Did you happen, Billy, to see any other heaps lying around?”

“I saw a pile of coke, over in the corner,” answered Billy.

“Somewhere,” said Uncle John, “there must have been a heap of limestone. They use that for what they call a flux. That unites with the waste things, the ashes of the coke and any sand that may have stuck to the pig iron. Those things together make slag. The slag is so much lighter than the iron that it floats on top, and there are tap holes in the cupola where they draw it off. Limestone helps the iron to melt, that’s another reason why they use it.”

“I saw some scales,” said Billy.

“Those,” said Uncle John, “are to weigh the things that they put into the cupola. There are rules for making cast iron. It all depends on what kind of machinery we want to make.

“First, in the bottom of the cupola, they make a fire of shavings and wood, with a little coal; then they put in coke, pig iron, scrap iron, and limestone, according to the rule for the kind of iron that they want to make.

“Those heaps all pieced together, Billy?”

“Sure,” answered Billy; and, then, the whistle blew.

Deep down in his heart, Billy didn’t like that whistle. He didn’t tell Uncle John, because William Wallace scorned anybody who felt like that. William Wallace said that being on time—on time to the minute—was only just business. Nevertheless, Billy missed being free. Aunt Mary’s errands hadn’t been timed by the clock.

There was another reason why he didn’t tell Uncle John how he felt.

“Stand by your job, every minute that you belong on it,” was one of the things that Uncle John had said so many times that it almost worried Billy.

But, before the summer was over, Billy was glad that he had kept that on his mind.

CHAPTER III
A MOUNTAIN OF IRON

Whether, if it hadn’t been for Billy’s new jack-knife, he and Thomas Murphy would have become friends, no one can say. It seems very probable that something would have made them like each other.

Sitting on a high stool to check time or in a chair to watch the great door had grown so monotonous that Tom really needed to have somebody to talk to.

Then there wasn’t any boy in the mill for Billy to get acquainted with; and Billy saw Tom oftener than he saw any of the other men. So it seems very natural that Billy and Tom should have become friends.

If they hadn’t, things wouldn’t have turned out just as they did; and whatever else might have happened, it was really the jack-knife that brought them together.

Billy had been in the mill about two weeks when, one morning, just as Tom was finishing making a mark after Uncle John’s name, snap went the point of his pencil.

Billy heard it break, and saw Tom put his hand into his pocket. Billy knew, from Tom’s face, before he drew his hand out, that there wasn’t any knife in his pocket.

So Billy put his dinner pail down, and pulling his knife out by the chain, said quickly:

“I’ll sharpen your pencil, Mr. Murphy.”

Billy had been practicing on sharpening pencils. He worked so fast that the men behind had hardly begun to grumble before the pencil was in working order, and the line began to move on again.

Though he did not know it, Billy had done something more than merely to sharpen Tom’s pencil. When he said, “Mr. Murphy,” he waked up something in Tom that Tom himself had almost forgotten about.

He had been called “Tom Murphy” so long, sometimes only “lame Tom,” that Billy’s saying “Mr. Murphy” had made him sit up very straight, while he was waiting for Billy to sharpen the pencil.

Mr. Prescott thought that he really appreciated Tom. He always said, “Tom Murphy is as faithful as the day is long”; but even Mr. Prescott didn’t know so much about Tom as he thought he did. If Billy and Tom hadn’t become friends, Mr. Prescott would probably never have learned anything about the “Mr. Murphy” side of Tom.

After that morning, Billy and Tom kept on getting acquainted, until one day when Uncle John had to go out one noon to see about some new window screens for Aunt Mary, Billy went to the door to see Tom.

Tom, having just sat down in his chair, was trying to get his lame leg into a position where it would be more comfortable.

“Does your leg hurt, Mr. Murphy?” asked Billy.

“Pretty bad to-day, William,” answered Thomas Murphy with a groan. “If it wasn’t so dry, I should think, from the way my leg aches, that it was going to rain, but there’s no hope of that.”

“It’s rheumatism, isn’t it?” asked Billy, sympathetically.

“Part of it is,” answered Tom, “but before that it was crush. I hope you don’t think I’ve never done anything but mark time at Prescott mill.

“I suppose that you think you’ve seen considerable iron in this yard and in this mill; but you don’t know half so much about iron as I did when my legs were as good as yours.

“Out West, where I was born, there are acres and acres and acres of iron almost on top of the ground; and, besides that, a whole mountain of iron.”

Tom paused a moment to move his leg again.

“Was there an iron mine in the ground, too?” asked Billy sitting down on the threshold of the door.

“Yes, there was,” answered Tom. “If I had stayed on top of the ground, perhaps I shouldn’t have been hurt. Might have been blown up in a gopher hole, though, the way my brother was.”

“O-oh!” said Billy.

“Never heard of a gopher hole, I suppose,” continued Tom, settling back in his chair, as though he intended to improve his opportunity to talk.

“That’s one way that they get iron out of a mountain. They make holes straight into a bank. Then they put in sacks of powder, and fire it with a fuse. That loosens the ore so that they can use a steam shovel. Sometimes the men go in too soon.”

“I wish,” said Billy with a little shiver, “that you would tell me about the mine.”

“That’ll be quite a contract,” said Thomas Murphy, clasping his hands across his chest, “but I was in one long enough to know.

“You’ll think there was a mine down in the ground when I tell you that I’ve been down a thousand feet in one myself.

“I went down that one in a cage; but in the mine where I worked I used to go down on ladders at the side of the shaft.”

“Was it something like a coal mine?” asked Billy.

“I’ve heard miners say,” answered Tom, “that some iron is so hard that it has to be worked with a pick and a shovel; but the iron in our mine was so soft that we caved it down.

“If I had been working with a pick, perhaps I shouldn’t have been hurt.

“When you cave iron, you go down to the bottom of the shaft and work under the iron. You cut out a place, and put in some big timbers to hold up the roof. Then you cut some more, and keep on till you think the roof may fall.

“Then you board that place in, and knock out some pillars, or blow them out, and down comes the iron. Then you put it in a car and push it to a chute, and that loads it on an elevator to be brought up. Sometimes they use electric trams; we used to have to push the cars.”

“It must be very hard work,” said Billy.

“Work, William, usually is hard,” said Thomas Murphy. “Work, underground or above ground, is work, William.”

“But you haven’t told me, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy, “how you hurt your knee.”

“The quickest way to tell you that, William, is to tell you that the cave, that time, caved too soon. I got caught on the edge of it.

“After I got out of the hospital, I tried to work above ground; but the noise of the steam shovels and the blasting wore me out. So, one day, I took an ore train, and went to the boat and came up the river.

“Finally, I drifted to Prescott mill, some seasons before you were born, William.”

“Have you ever wanted to go back?” asked Billy.

“No, William, I haven’t. There’s nobody left out there that belongs to me, anyway. My lame knee wasn’t the only reason why I left, William. I heard something about the country that I didn’t like at all; I didn’t like it at all.”

“Weren’t the people good?” asked Billy.

“Very good people,” answered Thomas Murphy firmly. “’Twas something about the mountain that I heard.

“There were always men around examining the mines. I never paid much attention to ’em till one day I heard a man—they said he came from some college—a-talking about volcanoes. He said that iron mountain was thrown up by a volcano, said he was sure of it.

“I never told anybody, William, but I cleared out the very next day. You’ve never heard anything about volcanoes round here, have you, William?”

“No, Mr. Murphy,” answered Billy.

“If you ever should, William——” said Thomas Murphy, leaning anxiously forward.

“If I ever do hear, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy, feeling that he was making a promise, “I’ll tell you right away.”

“Thank you, William,” said Tom. “You won’t mention it, will you?”

“No, Mr. Murphy,” answered Billy.

That was really the day when Billy and Thomas Murphy sealed their compact as friends.

CHAPTER IV
THE FOUNDRY

“My friend, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy, one night after supper, when he and Uncle John were sitting side by side on the steps.

“Did I understand?” interrupted Uncle John, “Mr. Murphy?”

“Yes,” answered Billy, “Mr. Thomas Murphy the timekeeper.”

“Exactly,” said Uncle John.

“Mr. Murphy,” Billy went on, “says that iron moves the world.”

“I should say,” said Uncle John, deliberately, “that power generally has to be put into an iron harness before anything can move; but Mr. Murphy evidently knows what he is talking about.”

“He says,” continued Billy, “that iron mills are very important places; and that, for his part, he’s glad that he works in an iron mill.”

“That’s the way every man ought to feel about his work,” said Uncle John; “all the work in the world has to be done by somebody.”

That remark sounded to Billy as if another motto might be coming; and, being tired, he wanted just to be social. So he said:

“Uncle John, did you ever see Miss King, the stenographer?”

“Only coming and going,” he answered.

“She’s a friend of mine, too,” said Billy. “She told me, to-day, that she wants me always to feel that she is my friend.”

“Everything going all right in the office, Billy?” asked Uncle John, quickly.

“Oh, yes,” answered Billy, with a little note of happiness in his voice. “She told me that so as to make me feel comfortable. She’s the loveliest woman I ever saw. Don’t you think, Uncle John, that yellow-brown is the prettiest color for hair?”

“I do,” said Uncle John, emphatically. Then, rising to go into the house, he added, “That’s exactly what I used to call Aunt Mary’s hair, yellow-brown.”

“Oh!” said Billy wonderingly. Then it was time for him to go to bed; but he lingered a moment to look at Aunt Mary’s hair that was dark brown, now, where it wasn’t gray. There was something in his “Good-night, Aunt Mary,” that made her look up from her paper as she said:

“Good-night, William Wallace.”

Anybody can see that William Wallace is a hard name for a boy to go to bed on. It was so hard for Billy that it almost hurt; but Billy had lived with Aunt Mary long enough to be sure that she meant to be a true friend.

Whether or not Mr. Prescott was his friend, Billy did not know. Mr. Murphy had told him one day when he was out by the door, waiting for the postman, that Mr. Prescott was a friend to every man in the mill. Billy supposed that every man was a friend back again. At any rate he knew that he was; and he hoped that, some day, he would be able to do something, just to show Mr. Prescott how much he liked him.

The more he thought about it, the more it didn’t seem possible that such a hope as that could ever come true.

But anybody who liked anybody else as much as he liked Mr. Prescott couldn’t help seeing that something bothered him. So Billy had a little secret with himself to try to look specially pleasant when Mr. Prescott came in from a trip around the mill. He had begun to think that Mr. Prescott had given up springing questions on him when, one very warm afternoon, Mr. Prescott looked up from his desk and said:

“William, if you were to have an afternoon off, what would you do?”

“I’d rather than anything else in the world,” answered Billy promptly, “go out into the country.”

“That being hardly feasible,” said Mr. Prescott, “what else would you rather do?”

“Next to that,” answered Billy, “I’d rather go into the foundry to see Uncle John work.”

“Well!” exclaimed Mr. Prescott, whirling around in his chair. “That’s about the last thing that I should have thought of, especially on such a hot day. May I inquire whether you are interested in iron?”

Billy, with a quick flash of spirit, answered promptly, “I am, sir.”

As promptly Mr. Prescott said, “I’m glad to hear it, William. You may spend the rest of the afternoon in the foundry.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Billy, very much surprised. Then he looked at Miss King, and she nodded and smiled.

Billy ran down the corridor, passing Mr. Murphy with a flying salute, and hurried across the yard to the foundry door.

Just then he remembered that he hadn’t a permit; but the foreman appeared in the door saying, “The super has telephoned over that you’re to visit us this afternoon.”

Pointing across the room, he added, “Your uncle is over there.”

Billy wanted to surprise his Uncle John, so he went carefully along the outer side of the long, low room, past pile after pile of gray black sand, until he came to the place where Uncle John was bending over what seemed to be a long bar of sand.

“Uncle John,” he said softly.

“Why, Billy, my lad!” exclaimed he, looking up with so much surprise in his face that Billy said quickly:

“It’s all right, Uncle John. Mr. Prescott sent me to watch you work.”

“Things,” said Uncle John, with a smile that made wrinkles around his eyes, “generally come round right if you wait for them.”

“What is that?” asked Billy, pointing at the bar.

“That is a mold for a lathe,” answered Uncle John. “I’m nearly through with it, then I’m going to help out on corn cutters. We have a rush order on corn canning machines. You’d better sit on that box till I’m through.”

Billy looked at the tiny trowel in Uncle John’s hand, and saw him take off a little sand in one place, and put some on in another, until the mold was smooth and even. Then he tested his corners with what he called a “corner slick.”

“I never supposed that you worked that way,” said Billy, “but Miss King told me that molders are artists in sand.”

“Did she, though?” said Uncle John, straightening up to take a final look at his work. “I’ll remember that.

“Now we’ll go over where they are working on the corn cutters. It’s a little cooler on that side.”

“Where does black sand come from?” asked Billy.

“It’s yellow,” answered his uncle, “when we begin to use it, but the action of the hot iron, as we use it, over and over, turns it black.”

Then came the work that Billy had waited so long to see.

Uncle John took a wooden frame—he called it a drag—which was about two feet square and not quite so deep. He put it on a bench high enough for him to work easily. Then he laid six cutters for a corn canning machine, side by side, in the bottom of the box.

“Those,” he said, “are patterns.”

Taking a sieve—a riddle—he filled it with moist sand which he sifted over the cutters. Next, with his fingers, he packed the sand carefully around the patterns. Then, with a shovel, he filled the drag with sand, and rammed it down with a wooden rammer until the drag was full.

“Now,” said he, taking up a wire, “I am going to make some vent holes, so the steam can escape.”

When that was done, he clamped a top on the box, turned it over, and took out the bottom.

Billy could see the cutters, bedded firm in the sand.

Blowing off the loose sand with bellows, and smoothing the sand around the pattern, Uncle John took some dry sand, which he sifted through his fingers, blowing it off where it touched the cutters.

“This sand,” he said, “will keep the two parts of the mold from sticking together.”

HE FILLED IT WITH MOIST SAND

Then he took another frame, a cope, which was like the first, except that it had pins on the sides, where the other had sockets. Slipping the pins into the sockets, he fastened them together.

Taking two round, tapering plugs of wood, he set them firmly in the sand, at each end of the patterns.

“One of those,” said he, “will make a place for the hot iron to go in, and the other for it to rise up on the other side.”

Then he filled the second box as he had the first, and made more vent holes.

“Billy,” he said, suddenly, “where are those corn cutters?”

“In the middle of the box,” answered Billy promptly, just as if he had always known about molding in sand.

“Now,” said Uncle John, “comes the artist part.”

Lifting the second part off the first, he turned it over carefully and set it on the bench.

“There they are,” exclaimed Billy.

“There they are,” said Uncle John, with a smile, “but there they are not going to remain.”

Dipping a sponge in water, he wet the sand around the edges of the pattern. Then he screwed a draw spike into the middle of the pattern and rapped it gently with a mallet to loosen it from the sand.

“Pretty nearly perfect, aren’t they?” he said, when he had them all safely out. “Now for some real artist work.”

With a lifter he took out the sand that had fallen into the mold, patched a tiny break here and there, and tested the corners.

Last of all he made grooves, which he called “gates,” between the patterns, and also at the ends where the iron was to be poured in.

Then he clamped the two boxes together. “Now the holes are in the middle,” said he, “and I hope that they will stay there till the iron is poured in.”

Billy, sitting on a box, watched Uncle John till he had finished another set of molds.

“That all clear so far?” asked Uncle John.

“Sure,” answered Billy.

“Think you could do it yourself?” broke in a heavy voice.

Billy, looking up, saw the foreman, who had been watching Billy while he watched his uncle.

“I think I know how,” answered Billy.

“If you won’t talk to the men,” said the foreman, “you may walk around the foundry until we are ready to pour.”

So Billy walked slowly around the long foundry. He saw that each man had his own pile of sand, but the piles were growing very small, because the day’s work was nearly over. The molds were being put in rows for the pouring.

He had walked nearly back to his Uncle John when he happened to step in a hollow place in the earth floor and, losing his balance, fell against a man who was carrying a mold.

With a strange, half-muttered expression the man pushed his elbow against Billy and almost threw him down.

Billy, looking up into a pair of fierce black eyes that glared at him from under a mass of coal black hair, turned so pale that William Wallace then and there called him a coward.

As fast as his feet would carry him Billy went back to Uncle John, who, still busy with his molds, said:

“Go out behind the foundry and look in at the window to see us pour.”

Billy, for the first time in his life thoroughly frightened, was glad to go out into the open air.

Then he went to the window opposite the great cupola to wait for the pouring.

There at the left of the furnace door stood the foundry foreman, tall and strong, holding a long iron rod in his hand. He, too, was waiting.

Then, because Billy had thought and thought over what Uncle John had told him about pouring, his mind began to make a picture; and when sparks of fire from the spout shot across the foundry, the cupola became a fiery dragon and the foreman a noble knight, bearing a long iron spear.

Only once breathed the dragon; for the knight, heedless of danger, closed the iron mouth with a single thrust of his spear.

Another wait. This time the knight forced the dragon to open his mouth, and the yielding dragon sent out his pointed, golden tongue.

But only for a moment; for again the knight thrust in his iron spear.

At last the knight gave way to the dragon.

Then, wonder of wonders, from the dragon’s mouth there came a golden, molten stream.

When the great iron ladle below was almost filled, the knight closed once more the dragon’s mouth.

Two by two came men bearing between them long-handled iron ladles. The great ladle swung forward, for a moment, on its tilting gear, and the men bore away their ladles filled with iron that the great dragon had changed from its own dull gray to the brilliant yellow of gold.

The molds, as they were filled, smoked from all their venting places, till, to his picture, Billy added a place for a battle-field.

By the time that the last molds were filled, some of the men began to take off the wooden frames, and there the iron was, gray again, but, this time, shaped for the use of man.

“See,” said Uncle John, coming to the window, “there are our corn cutters. Came out pretty well, didn’t they?”

“Wasn’t it great!” exclaimed Billy.

“Just about as wonderful every time,” said Uncle John.

“What do they do next?” asked Billy.

“Make new heaps of sand—every man his own heap—and in the morning, after the castings have been carried into the mill, they begin all over again.”

“I’m so glad I saw it,” said Billy, drawing a deep breath of satisfaction.

That night he told Aunt Mary about what he had seen. And he thought about it almost until he fell asleep. Almost, but not quite; for, just as he was dozing off, William Wallace said: