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Title: The story of iron

Author: Elizabeth Ida Samuel

Illustrator: Velma T. Simkins

Release date: July 10, 2022 [eBook #68492]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Penn Publishing Co, 1914

Credits: Amber Black, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF IRON ***



[Illustration: SEVEN MINUTES LEFT]




[Illustration]

  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

  [Illustration]




  _To
  P. K. P._




Contents


  I. BILLY BRADFORD                     9

  II. OLD IRON                         19

  III. A MOUNTAIN OF IRON              29

  IV. THE FOUNDRY                      37

  V. THE GREAT IRON KEY                52

  VI. A SURPRISE OR TWO                62

  VII. IRON CUTS IRON                  75

  VIII. TRAITOR NAILS                  90

  IX. BILLY STANDS BY                 102

  X. WILLIAM WALLACE                  112

  XI. THE TREASURE ROOM               123

  XII. THOMAS MURPHY, TIMEKEEPER      142

  XIII. IRON HORSES                   156

  XIV. THE GIANTS                     171

  XV. THE PYGMIES                     186

  XVI. WHAT MR. PRESCOTT SAID         203




Illustrations


                                            PAGE

  SEVEN MINUTES LEFT              _Frontispiece_

  HE FILLED IT WITH MOIST SAND                45

  THERE WERE MEN POLISHING AND POLISHING      80

  “HERE IS HIS SWORD”                        136

  “THE MOST FEARFUL THING EVER MADE”         181

  “HE’S STILL LOOKING AT THE GATE”           205




[Illustration]




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.”




[Illustration]




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.




[Illustration]




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.




[Illustration]




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.”

[Illustration: 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:

“You were frightened--frightened. You showed a white feather!”

Half asleep as he was, Billy, tired of William Wallace’s superior airs,
roused himself long enough to say: “We’ll see who has white feathers.”




[Illustration]




CHAPTER V

THE GREAT IRON KEY


July was hot. Everybody said so. The sun burned the grass in the yards
till it was brown, and no rain came to make it green again. All the men
were tired; some of them were cross.

Mr. Prescott put in more electric fans. Then he played the hose to keep
the air cool, but the water supply was so low that he was ordered to
stop using the hose.

One day he had an awning put up near the gate, and sent lame Tom
Murphy, the timekeeper, out there to sit.

Tom, preferring the cool of the great door where he had always sat,
confided his trouble to Billy.

“It’s my opinion,” he said, “privately spoken to you alone, that the
super sent me out here for something besides air. It’s been my opinion,
for some time, that there’s trouble somewhere.”

“I suppose,” said Billy, assuming a business tone, “that you’re a
friend back again, aren’t you, Mr. Murphy?”

Unconsciously sitting straighter in his chair, he answered, “I’m not
altogether clear as to your meaning, William.”

“You told me yourself, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy, still speaking very
firmly, “that Mr. Prescott is a friend to every man in the mill. Aren’t
you a friend back again?”

“I am,” answered the timekeeper emphatically. “You may depend on me in
all weathers, even to sitting out here in the sun.”

“Then,” said Billy, “you and I, Mr. Murphy, are both friends, on our
honor as gentlemen--that’s what my father used to say.”

“I am,” answered Thomas Murphy.

Just then they heard the honk, honk of Mr. Prescott’s machine, and
Billy stood carefully aside for him to pass.

Mr. Prescott, who was alone, said:

“Things all right, Thomas? Jump in, William.”

Billy, surprised beyond words, obeyed.

Mr. Prescott, starting the car quickly, drove rapidly down the street.

When they reached the square, Billy said:

“Some letters, sir, to post. That’s where I was going.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Prescott, stopping the car.

“Ever in a machine before?” he asked, as Billy got in again beside him.

“No, sir.”

“Think I’ll take you with me then; I’m chasing an order. We’re nearly
out of coke.”

They rode so fast that the air began to seem cooler. Billy, quite
willing to be silent with Mr. Prescott beside him, settled back in the
seat in blissful content.

“Know anything about coke, William?” asked Mr. Prescott, breaking the
silence, suddenly.

“No, sir, except that it’s gray, and that they burn it in the cupola.”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Mr. Prescott; “you’re interested in iron.
Well, then, it’s time that you knew something about coke.

“Long ago they used charcoal, that is, partly burned wood, in the iron
furnaces. That used up the forests so fast that, over in England, the
government had to limit the number of iron furnaces.

“Then they tried to use coal. That didn’t work very well. Finally
somebody found that, if the coal was partly burned, that is, made
into coke, it would require less blast, and the iron would melt more
quickly. It was a great day for iron when coke came in.”

The car sped on, and again Mr. Prescott lapsed into silence.

The country didn’t look at all like the country that Billy dreamed
about. His was green. This was brown. But there were no hot, red bricks
to look at; that was something to be thankful for, anyway.

“See anything new?” asked Mr. Prescott.

“What are they?” asked Billy, pointing to long rows of something that
looked like large beehives.

“Coke ovens; they call them beehive ovens. That overhead railway is
where they charge the ovens through the top. After the coal has burned
about two days, it is quenched with water. Then they draw it out at the
bottom as coke, and put in a new charge while the ovens are still hot.”

After he got home that night--it was closing time when they reached the
square where Mr. Prescott left him--Billy couldn’t remember that Mr.
Prescott had said a word to him all the way back. But Billy was happy,
and rested, too.

While they were walking to the mill the next morning Uncle John said:

“Billy, my lad, I want to give you some confidential advice. You went
out riding with the superintendent yesterday, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Billy.

“But you’re the office boy, just the same, this morning?”

“Sure, Uncle John,” answered Billy.

“I thought you’d be clear on that,” said Uncle John, beaming with
pride. “I thought you’d be clear on that!”

Billy began the day as an office boy, dusting and sharpening pencils
and sorting the mail.

Miss King came in, looking cool and pretty in her white office dress,
with a bunch of sweet peas in her hand.

“Beautiful, aren’t they, William?” she said holding them up in the
light. “See how the lavender ones have pink in them, and the pink have
white, and the white are just tinted with pink, so they all blend
together. I always pick some leaves, too; they’re such a soft, cool
green.”

“Do you suppose,” asked Billy, “that they’d grow in a yard--just a
common yard?”

“These grew in our back yard,” answered Miss King. “I’ll give you some
seed next year.”

At that moment Mr. Prescott came in with a telegram in his hand.

“Have to catch the nine-forty express,” he said. “Can’t get back for
three days, anyway. Open those letters, William.”

Out came Billy’s knife, and he opened letters while Mr. Prescott
dictated to Miss King.

“Don’t,” said Mr. Prescott, seizing his hat, “let anybody know that I
have gone if you can help it. Don’t tell them how long I shall be gone.
You and William must look after everything.”

Then off he went, leaving Miss King and Billy looking at each other in
dismay.

“Well,” said Miss King, after a moment, “we don’t know where he has
gone. So we can’t tell anybody that. And we don’t know when he is
coming back.

“It isn’t very likely,” she added, with a reassuring smile, “that
anything will happen while he is gone.”

Billy, who had never forgotten about keeping his ears open, thought
Miss King said “very” as if she weren’t quite sure about something. So
he said:

“I’ll stay in here with you as much as I can.”

“Thank you,” said Miss King, smiling.

“There’s nothing to do, anyway,” she went on, half to herself, “except
to do things as they come along. So we’ll do that, William.

“Please get me some water for the flowers.”

Then she opened the typewriter and began to write very fast.

The day went on very much like other days. The mill seemed almost to be
running itself.

When they were leaving the office that night Miss King said cheerfully:

“We’ve had a very pleasant day, haven’t we, William?”

“Seems to me I haven’t worked so hard as usual,” answered Billy.

The next day when Billy came back from the bank, soon after the noon
whistle had blown, lame Tom’s chair under the canopy by the gate was
empty.

Billy, hurrying on to the main building, found that Tom’s chair by the
great door was empty, too.

As he stepped inside, Tom appeared from behind the door.

When he saw Billy an expression of relief came into his face.

“I’m glad to see you, William,” he said. “Stand in the door a minute
and pretend I’m not talking to you.”

Billy, wondering what could have happened, turned his back on Tom, and
waited.

“William,” said Tom, in an almost sepulchral tone, “the great key is
gone.”

Billy nearly jumped out the door. But, remembering that he was on duty
to look after things, he said:

“You watch while I try to find it.”

Even Billy’s young eyes could not find the key. He searched till he was
sure, then he said:

“I’ll look again, Mr. Murphy, after you go out to the gate.”

The key was one of Mr. Prescott’s special treasures, for it was the
very one that his grandfather had when he first built the mill. Several
times the door had been almost made over, but the key had never been
changed.

It was an iron key--three times as long as Billy’s longest finger, with
a bow in which three of his fingers and almost a fourth could lie side
by side, and its bit was more than half as long as his thumb. It was so
large that Mr. Prescott sometimes called lame Tom “the keeper of the
great key.”

Gone it was. Billy hunted till he was sure of that. He wanted to tell
Miss King about it, but he could not stop to tell her then, for he had
to distribute the orders for the afternoon.

Here and there he went. Last of all he had to go into the foundry. He
was half-way down the room before he realized that he was on the side
where he must pass the man with the fierce eyes and the coal black
hair. Determined this time to be brave, he went steadily on.

The man was standing still, bending over his drag, his shock of unkempt
hair hanging down over his eyes. He was so intent on his work that
Billy, so nearly past that he felt quite safe, looked down curiously to
see what pattern the man was using.

There, all by itself, in the bottom of the box, lay the great iron key.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER VI

A SURPRISE OR TWO


The sight of the key did something more than to make Billy’s eyes
open very wide; it struck to his legs. They grew so heavy that, for
a minute, he couldn’t lift them at all. But he kept on trying, and
finally succeeded in pulling up first one, and then the other, and in
starting them both. Then they wanted to move fast, and he had hard work
to slow them down to simply a quick walk. At last he reached the door,
and hurried across the yard and down the corridor to the office.

When he opened the door, something struck to his feet, and fairly glued
them to the threshold.

There at his desk, writing away hard, sat Mr. Prescott.

Billy’s blue eyes, large from seeing the key, grew still larger, so
that, when Mr. Prescott finally looked up, he saw quite a different boy
from the Billy whom he had left only the day before.

“Well, William,” he said, as he put down his pen, “having obeyed to
the letter--I might say to the period--my injunction to keep your lips
shut, suppose you open them.”

Billy’s tongue seemed to be fastened to the roof of his mouth tighter
than his feet were to the floor, and he couldn’t seem to unfasten it.

“Perhaps,” continued Mr. Prescott, “it might be as well, just at this
point, for me to inform you that surprise is one of the persistent
elements of business. I met another telegram, so you meet me. What has
happened?”

When Billy finally reached the desk and began to tell him about the
key, Mr. Prescott whirled around in his chair and put his right thumb
into the right armhole of his vest.

Before Billy had finished, though his tongue, having started, went very
fast, Mr. Prescott put his other thumb in his other armhole, and leaned
back in his chair till his shoulders seemed almost to fill the space
between the desk and the railing.

“Well,” he said, when Billy had finished, “as you are the one in
possession of the original facts, what do you think had better be done?”

If Mr. Prescott had only known it, Billy didn’t like him very well
when he talked that way. But of course nobody can like anybody every
minute of the time; for even a best hero is more than likely to have
disagreeable spots. Billy’s father had told him that, and Billy was
very much like his father in the way he had of forgetting disagreeables
pretty soon after they happened. Just that minute, anyway, his whole
mind was on that great iron key.

Besides, when Mr. Prescott talked that way, he always hit the man-side
of Billy. Possibly Mr. Prescott knew that.

“I think, sir,” answered Billy, almost before he knew what he was
saying, “that I can get the key.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” said Mr. Prescott. “Will you be so kind as to
tell me about what time to-day you will deliver it?”

Billy looked at the clock.

Miss King’s keys kept right on--clickety-clickety-click.

Billy changed his weight to his other foot before he answered:

“About four o’clock, sir.”

Mr. Prescott looked at the clock, then he took up his pen, saying:

“It is now nearly half-past three. It would be a pity, in such an
important matter, for you to fail for lack of time to work out any
little theory that you happen to have originated. Suppose we make it
half-past four o’clock.”

As Billy started for the door Mr. Prescott added:

“Having opened your lips, you may close them again, a little tighter
than before. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Billy.

“Mind,” called Mr. Prescott, when Billy had almost closed the door,
“you are to return at half-past four, key or no key.”

“Sure, sir,” answered Billy.

Things don’t always look the same on both sides of a door. Billy found
that out as soon as he was alone in the corridor. But Billy had a
theory, though Mr. Prescott may have thought that he was joking, and
it was built on so firm a foundation that William Wallace offered, at
once, to help him work it out.

Billy hadn’t visited Uncle John that day in the foundry simply for
nothing. He had it all figured out in his mind that, as soon as the
black-haired man had finished using the key for a pattern, he would put
it back in the door; and Billy had said four o’clock because that was
about the time when the molds were supposed to be ready.

When a man knew as much about molding as Mr. Prescott did, it did seem
as if he might have figured that out himself.

Billy looked around for a place where he could hide to watch the door.
There wasn’t anybody in sight, so he took plenty of time to decide.

Half-way down the corridor, on the right hand side, was a small closet
that had been built up on the floor, by itself, so that Mr. Prescott
could have a place to keep his motor clothes.

Billy went into that, and tried, by leaving the door part way open, to
fix a crack through which he could watch the door. Finding that the
crack was too far out of range, he started down the corridor to find
another place.

He had just about decided to try hiding behind the tool room when he
heard a step, and, looking up, saw Thomas Murphy, the timekeeper.

“It’s a great relief, William,” said Tom, “to see a friend like you.
Does the super know about the key?”

Billy looked at Tom, and Tom looked at Billy. Bad as Tom felt, Billy
felt three times worse. Billy had three things on his mind: first of
all, he mustn’t tell a lie; then, he must keep the secret; and, if Tom
Murphy stayed by that door, the man wouldn’t bring back the key.

Billy and William Wallace both thought as fast as they could. Billy got
hold of an idea first. Perhaps by asking Tom a question he could throw
him off the track, and could keep from telling a lie.

So he said: “Had you made up your mind, Mr. Murphy, when it would be
best to tell him?”

“No, William,” answered Tom Murphy, in a hopeless tone, “I hadn’t. I’ve
turned that thing over and over in my mind, and I’ve turned it inside
out; and all the answer that I can get to it is that there’ll be no Tom
Murphy any more a-keepin’ time at Prescott mill.”

“But you didn’t lose the key, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy, very
sympathetically, now that his first danger was over.

“That I didn’t,” said Tom Murphy. “It’s been a rule and a regulation
that that key was to stay in that door from morning to night. That key
ought _not_ to have been left in that door.”

“No,” said Billy, “excepting that everybody knows how much Mr. Prescott
thinks of that key.”

“That’s just it,” said Thomas Murphy, pulling his old chair out from
behind the door, and sinking into it with a sigh of relief.

“What would you,” he asked as he stretched out his lame leg, and
clasped his hands across his chest, “what would you advise, as a
friend? Don’t leave me, William,” he exclaimed, as Billy stepped
outside.

“I won’t,” said Billy, stepping forward far enough to see the clock.

Fifteen minutes gone! Where had fifteen minutes gone?

“Do you think, William,” asked Thomas Murphy, as Billy went back to
him, “that, if the super never finds that key, there will be any Thomas
Murphy any more a-keepin’ time at Prescott mill?”

“You know,” said Billy, “that Mr. Prescott is a friend to everybody.
I think,” he added slowly, because he was trying to keep still and at
the same time to be wise, “I think he would be--more of--a friend--to a
man--than to a key.”

“His grandfather’s key?” said Tom solemnly.

“His grandfather’s key,” repeated Billy, backing toward the door, and
stepping out.

Five minutes of four!

Looking over at the foundry, Billy saw a man with shaggy black hair
who, with his right hand pressed close against his side, was stepping
back into the foundry door!

Billy himself stepped quickly back.

“William,” said Thomas Murphy, “you seem to be unusually oneasy.”

“It’s a very warm day,” said Billy.

“If it seems hot to you in here,” said Thomas Murphy, settling still
further back in his chair, “what do you think it has been to me
a-sittin’ out under that canopy in the sun?”

Billy grew desperate. “Mr. Murphy,” he said, “it seems to me--do you
think, Mr. Murphy--I mean--don’t you think that Mr. Prescott expects
you are sitting out there now?”

“That may be,” answered Thomas Murphy.

“Don’t you think,” said Billy, growing more and more desperate, “that
it would be a good plan for us to go out there together?”

“Sometimes,” said Thomas Murphy, in an injured tone, “a man’s best
friends can make things very hard for him.”

“Can I help you to get up?” asked Billy, going up to Thomas Murphy, and
putting his hand on his arm.

“No, William,” said Thomas Murphy, moving his arm with more decision
than was really necessary. “Thomas Murphy is still able to rise without
the assistance of a--a friend.”

Slowly Thomas Murphy drew himself from the depths of the chair.

Billy, backing out the great door, saw the clock.

Ten minutes more gone!

“Hurry up!” said William Wallace. “Hurry up!”

“I tell you, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy in his most friendly tone, “I’ll
go out under the canopy. Then, if Mr. Prescott does come out, he’ll see
that there’s somebody at the gate.”

“Very well,” said Thomas Murphy, lowering his lame leg carefully down
the step. “Very well.”

Billy, glad of a chance to work off his feelings, ran out to the gate
as fast as he could.

Slowly, very slowly, Thomas Murphy came across the yard.

Billy, that he might not seem to be watching, stood with his back to
the mill.

About the time that he thought Thomas Murphy would reach the gate,
he heard a sudden exclamation. Turning around, he saw Thomas Murphy,
timekeeper of Prescott mill, lying flat on his face.

Quarter-past four stood the hands of the clock. Never in his life had
Billy seen them move so fast at that time of the day.

Hurrying back he asked, “Can I help you, Mr. Murphy?”

“Thank you, William,” answered Thomas Murphy, holding out his hand for
help. “A friend in need is a friend indeed.”

As Billy bent over to help Thomas Murphy, he saw something that, for a
moment, made him so excited that he couldn’t have told whether he was
standing on his head or his heels.

A black-haired man was creeping along the wall toward the door of the
mill!

When he was sure that he was standing on his heels, Billy looked at the
clock.

Seven minutes left!

He helped Thomas Murphy to his chair. He even took time to say, “Mr.
Murphy, there are some things that I have been wanting to ask you about
iron.”

“Anything,” said Thomas Murphy, safe in his chair, “anything that I
know is at your service, William.”

Then Billy said, “Mr. Prescott told me to come back at half-past four.”

“I should say,” remarked Thomas Murphy, “that you’ll have to hurry,
William. Near as I can see the hands of that clock, it’s hard on to
that now.”

Billy did hurry, and soon had the key safe in his hands.

As he went quickly down the corridor, William Wallace gave him some
special advice:

“Don’t explain. Business is business. Just deliver the key.”

When Billy went into the office, Mr. Prescott glanced at the clock.

“Punctuality, William,” he said, “is a desirable thing in business.”

He took the key just as if he had been expecting it.

“Thank you, William,” he said.

Then, seeming to forget Billy, he began to look the key over, stem,
bit, and bow, touching it here and there, and holding it carefully, as
if it were something that he valued very much.

Realizing, at last, that Billy was waiting, he said:

“Surprise, as I was saying, is one of the elements that must be
reckoned with in business.”

When he said that, he used his firm, business tone.

But his voice was very gentle as he looked straight into Billy’s eyes,
and added:

“This time, William, the surprise is mine.”




[Illustration]




CHAPTER VII

IRON CUTS IRON


About the middle of the next forenoon, as Billy was going through the
gate, Thomas Murphy leaned forward confidentially, and said:

“William, that key was in that door when I went to lock it last night.”

“Yes,” said Billy, hurrying on, “I saw it there when I went home.”

Billy didn’t care to discuss the matter.

The truth was that he thought it very strange that Mr. Prescott should
have put the key right back in the lock. Business seemed to him to have
some queer places in it.

But it had pleasant places, too, for, when Billy came back, he met Mr.
Prescott, just starting on his trip around the mill.

“William,” he said, “when a boy makes practical use of a visit to a
foundry, I think it would be a good idea for him to go over a mill,
don’t you?”

That was a long speech for Mr. Prescott. There wasn’t any time lost,
however, for Billy didn’t answer. He didn’t have to, because his face
told, right away, what he thought about it.

Miss King, looking up, nodded and smiled.

Off they went: tall, broad man; boy that was growing taller and
slenderer every day.

Billy threw back his shoulders, and drew a long, deep breath. Part of
it was satisfaction; the rest was a desire to be strong and broad like
Mr. Prescott.

“That,” said Mr. Prescott, as they passed a huge drum which was turning
over and over and making a great noise, “is a rattler. There’s some
sand left on castings after molding. Put small ones in there with
pieces of wood. Rub each other off.”

Mr. Prescott went on, seeming to forget Billy, as he spoke here and
there to his men.

Billy followed close, for he knew that Mr. Prescott was likely, any
moment, to spring a question on him.

They were half-way over the mill before Mr. Prescott spoke again. Then,
stopping suddenly before a large lathe, he said:

“John Bradford makes our best beds and slides. See him?” he asked,
turning to Billy.

“He was making something long,” answered Billy.

“We make lathes,” said Mr. Prescott. “Good ones; all kinds.”

In the next room he stopped again.

“Different kinds of iron,” he said. “Some much harder than others, like
tool steel. Iron cuts iron. That’s a planing machine: automatic plane
cuts any thickness.”

Billy stopped beside the mighty planer, moving over the large casting
as easily as if the iron had been wood and the fierce chisel only a
carpenter’s plane.

They went on a little further, then Mr. Prescott turned suddenly.
“William,” he asked, “how long is an inch?”

He certainly had sprung it on Billy, but Billy’s spring worked too.

“About down to there,” he answered, marking his left forefinger off
with his right. “No,” he said, moving his mark up a little higher,
“about there.”

“You were nearer right the first time,” said Mr. Prescott. “Now, listen
to me. Iron can cut iron to within a fraction of a thousandth of an
inch.”

Billy’s eyes opened till they showed almost twice as much white as blue.

“Automatic index registers. Man watches index.

“Look at that,” he said a moment later. “See that machine cutting a
screw.”

That seemed to be something that especially interested Mr. Prescott,
for he stood a moment to watch the tool that was cutting into the
round bar of iron, making, in even and regular grooves, a huge screw.
Automatically, too, there came down on it a steady stream of oil.

“Why’s that?” asked Billy.

“The oil keeps the iron from becoming too hot,” answered Mr. Prescott.
“Heat expands iron. If we didn’t keep it cool, the screw wouldn’t be
the right size when it is done.

“Cold naturally works the other way. Ever hear about the iron bridge
where the parts wouldn’t quite come together, so they put ice on to do
the job?” he asked, but he kept right on, without waiting for Billy to
answer.

Billy saw other machines boring holes and rounding corners. It seemed
as if iron could cut iron into any shape that anybody wanted.

Then there were men polishing and polishing, until they could fairly
see their faces in the iron. Billy could hardly believe that the gray
iron of the foundry could ever have become such silver-shining iron.

Still Mr. Prescott kept on, Billy close behind.

“This,” said Mr. Prescott, stopping in a room almost at the end of
the mill, “is the assembly room. Here is where the machines are put
together.”

[Illustration: THERE WERE MEN POLISHING AND POLISHING]

“Over there,” he said, pointing across the room, “they are putting a
lathe together. There will be between sixty and seventy pieces in it
when it is done. See, they have arranged all the parts.”

Billy looked wonderingly at the great base and slide, and then at the
rods and screws and handles and nuts. He didn’t see how anybody could
tell how they went together.

When he asked Mr. Prescott, he said:

“They have drawings that they follow till the men can do it almost
without referring to the drawing.”

“What’s that?” asked Billy, pointing to a queer thing over beyond the
lathe.

“That,” answered Mr. Prescott, “is one of our special orders. It is a
corn canning machine.”

Billy’s eyes grew so bright that Mr. Prescott said:

“Do corn canners interest you more than lathes?”

“That’s what Uncle John was making the day that I went to watch him; he
made some of the knives.”

“Here they are,” said Mr. Prescott, “where they were made to go. I
think, myself, that this is rather an interesting machine. They put the
corn in at one end, and it comes out in cans at the other, and nobody
touches it.”

“It’s wonderful,” said Billy, going over once more to look at the parts
of a lathe that were assembled, ready to be put together, “how all the
parts fit, when so many different people make them.”

“If every man in this world would do his work as faithfully as our men
do, things in the world would fit together much better than they do,”
said Mr. Prescott.

That sounded like Uncle John. It was the first time that Billy had
thought that Mr. Prescott and Uncle John were a little alike.

A moment later, Mr. Prescott pushed back a sliding door, and they both
went into the new part of the mill.

“This,” said Mr. Prescott, “is to be the new assembly room. We have
needed it for a long time. I shall be glad when it is done.”

Then he turned so suddenly that he almost ran into Billy.

“Any questions, William?” he asked.

Billy’s face must have given his answer again, for Mr. Prescott pushed
an empty box toward Billy.

Finding one for himself he turned it over, and, sitting down opposite
him, said:

“Fire away.”

“What,” asked Billy, “is the difference between iron and steel?”

“If you were to put that question as it ought to be put,” answered Mr.
Prescott, pushing his box against the wall, and leaning back with his
hands in his pockets, “you would ask what is the difference between
irons and steels.

“If I were to talk all day, I couldn’t fully answer that question; but
perhaps I can clear things up for you just a little.

“In the first place, every mining region produces its own variety of
ore--so there are a great many kinds of iron to start with. In the next
place, the kind of iron that you get from the ore depends largely on
how you treat it.

“I suppose that you have seen a blacksmith shoe horses, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” answered Billy. “I knew a blacksmith up in the country.”

“Well,” said Mr. Prescott, “how did he work?”

“He heated the shoe red-hot on the forge, and then hammered it into
shape on the anvil.”

“Blew bellows, didn’t he?” queried Mr. Prescott.

“Sure,” answered Billy. “Sometimes he used to let me do that.”

“Well, then,” said Mr. Prescott, “just remember three things: fuel,
blast, and hammer--power, of course, behind the hammer. It’s the
different variations that men have been making on those three things
that have brought iron where it is to-day.

“Iron ore has so many things besides iron in it that the problem has
always been how to get the impurities out.

“The old blacksmiths used to put it in the fire and hammer it; put it
back in the fire and hammer again, until they worked most of the other
things out. They made what is called forge iron.

“Then an Englishman, named Cort, found a way to burn and roll the
impurities out. The thing they particularly wanted to get rid of was
carbon, because that makes iron too brittle to use for a great many
things.

“They worked away till a man--Sir Henry Bessemer--found a way to burn
out all the carbon, and to make a kind of steel called Bessemer steel.

“Steel is, technically, an alloy of iron and carbon. The point is to
have the carbon added to the iron in just the right proportion to make
the kind of steel that you may happen to want.

“Bessemer--he was an Englishman, too--invented a converter to put
carbon back into iron, that is, to make iron into steel.

“When it comes to telling you about steels, I can’t do that to-day;
there are too many kinds.

“You may not know it, William, but you are living in the age of steel.
Industry depends on iron, for almost all the tools in the world are
made of steel.

“Cast iron, like ours, is more brittle than steel, because it has much
more carbon in it; but it is useful for many things. I shall stand
right by cast iron.”

Then he said, half to himself:

“Sometimes I wish the other fellows hadn’t discovered quite so much. I
should have liked to have a hand in it myself.”

Then Billy put the question that he had been trying to find a chance to
ask.

“Mr. Prescott,” he began, but stopped a moment, as though he were
having some difficulty in getting his question into shape. “Do
volcanoes ever throw up mountains of iron?”

“Trying to get back to the beginning, are you?” asked Mr. Prescott.
“Planning to be a geologist?”

But seeing that Billy was too serious, just then, to be put off
lightly, Mr. Prescott went on:

“That’s a good question. The geologists tell us, and I suppose that
they are right, that there was once a chain of active volcanoes up in
the Lake Superior region, and that is why there is so much iron up
there now.

“There are some volcanoes in the world now, but the volcanoes that the
geologists talk about became extinct--dead, you know--long before the
earth was ready for man. Nobody knows how many thousands of years ago.

“Noon!” he exclaimed, as the whistle blew. “What a short morning this
has been!”

As soon as Billy could get to Uncle John he told him where he had been.

“I thought,” said Uncle John, nodding his head, “that that chance would
come some day, Billy. Watch for a chance, and it generally comes.”

Not until Billy went out the gate that night did he have an opportunity
to speak to Thomas Murphy.

He let Uncle John go on a few steps ahead, then he said in a low tone:

“Mr. Murphy, there were volcanoes out there J-ologists say so; but
they’re dead; been dead thousands of years.”

Thomas Murphy, listening with eager ears, looked gravely into Billy’s
eyes.

“All of ’em, everywhere?” he asked earnestly.

“Those old volcanoes,” answered Billy, so impressed with Tom’s
seriousness that he made each word stand out by itself, “are all dead,
everywhere.”

The look of relief that came into Tom’s face almost startled Billy.

Then, seeing that Uncle John was waiting for him, Billy said quickly:

“Just as soon as I can get a chance, Mr. Murphy, I want you to tell me
some more of the things that you know about iron.”

Thomas Murphy, suddenly freed from his fear, straightened up as, with
the air of an expert, he said:

“That’s a large subject, William.”

“You and Tom Murphy,” said Uncle John, when Billy overtook him, “seem
to be pretty good friends.”

“I promised to tell him something,” said Billy.

But that was all he said, for just as truly as Thomas Murphy knew that
work is work, did Billy Bradford know that secrets are secrets.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER VIII

TRAITOR NAILS


For several days Billy was so busy that he had to resist all of Tom
Murphy’s attempts to make him stop to talk.

Then one noon, as he was going through the gate, Tom said:

“Why don’t you bring your dinner out here, William? Then we can have
that talk about iron.”

Much as he wanted to be with Uncle John, Billy really was anxious to
hear what Thomas Murphy had to say about iron. So he answered:

“I think, Mr. Murphy, that that would be a good plan.”

When Billy came back, Thomas Murphy, eager of his opportunity, was
putting the cover on his own pail.

Then, sitting up straight in his chair, and swelling with oratorical
pride, he began:

“William, I told you that iron is a large subject. The more a man
thinks about it, the larger it gets.

“Here,” he said, waving his left hand, “is our mill. What do we make?
We make lathes, corn canners, and--and--all sorts of things. What do we
make them of? Iron.

“What carries them all over the country? Iron engines. What do those
engines run on, William? Iron rails. What carries ’em across the ocean?
Iron ships.

“What makes our flour? Iron grinding machines.

“What heats our houses? Iron stoves. What----”

Pausing a moment for breath, he thrust his thumbs under his suspenders.
Happening to hit the buckles, he began again:

“What holds our clothes together? Iron buckles, iron buttons,” he said
with emphasis.

Pausing again, he looked up.

“What,” he said, pointing dramatically at the telephone wire, “carries
our messages from land to land, from shore to shore? Iron.”

He paused again. Seeing that he had Billy’s attention, Tom looked at
him a moment in silence.

“William,” he said so suddenly that Billy fairly jumped, “those very
shoes that you are a-standin’ in are held together by iron nails!”

Then, leaning forward, with his elbows resting on the arms of his
chair, he concluded:

“William, as far as I can see, if it wasn’t for iron, we should all be
just nothin’, nobody.”

Billy, drawing a long breath, said:

“You’ve certainly done a lot of thinking, Mr. Murphy.”

“I thank you, William,” said Thomas Murphy, “for a-seem’ and a-sayin’
that I’ve been a-thinkin’.”

Tom had set Billy to thinking, too. By night there were several things
that Billy wanted to know.

It was so hot that Aunt Mary surprised them by setting the table out in
the hall. There wasn’t room for them to sit at the table, so she handed
them the things out on the steps.

“That was a good idea, Mary,” said Uncle John, when they were through.
“I’m glad that you worked that out.”

Billy, looking up into her face, said:

“It was real nice, Aunt Mary.”

Aunt Mary smiled. Billy, watching her, thought that her smile had moved
just a little further out on her face. So he said again:

“It was _real_ nice, Aunt Mary.”

Was he wrong, or did her smile move still a little further out?

“Uncle John,” said Billy, “are ships made of iron?”

“Why, Billy, you’re not going to sail away from us, are you?” said
Uncle John, almost unconsciously putting his hand on Billy’s. “Ships
are made of steel.”

“Mr. Prescott,” said Billy, “explained to me about steel, and about
forges.”

“When this country was first settled,” said Uncle John, “men had little
forges to make iron, just as their wives had spinning wheels to make
wool for clothes.

“When they began to make nails--they couldn’t build houses without
nails--there was a forge in almost every chimney corner. Children, as
well as grown people, used to make nails and tacks in the long winter
evenings. People then took nails to the store to pay for things, as in
the country they now take eggs.

“That old forge iron was never very pure. It did the work that they had
to do, but the world needed better iron, and more of it. It took a good
while to find out a better way. The men that finally succeeded worked
hard and long. You ought to begin to read up about those men.

“Of course it closed out a good many blacksmiths, but it helped the
world along. Guess they found, in the end, that it helped them along,
too.”

Then Billy told Uncle John what Thomas Murphy had said about being
“nothing and nobody.” Aunt Mary came out to know what they were
laughing about, so he told her the story.

“Mind you, Billy,” said Uncle John, “I’m only laughing at the way
he put it. Murphy is right. He seems to be unusually clear on the
usefulness of iron.”

Only a day or two later Billy had occasion to remember what Tom Murphy
had said about the nails in his shoes.

In spite of all his efforts to grow broad, Billy was growing taller
and slimmer every day. His legs were getting so long and his trousers
so short, that Billy was beginning to wish that he could have some new
clothes. But that wasn’t his greatest worry.

There generally is one worry on top. This time it was shoes. They were
growing short, but, worse than that, the sole of the right one was
beginning to look as if it were coming off at the toe.

He and Aunt Mary looked at it every morning, for she hadn’t quite money
enough for a new pair. Uncle John still made Billy put his money in the
bank--“Against a rainy day,” Uncle John said.

Billy had tried, as hard as he could, to favor his right shoe. Of
course he couldn’t walk quite even: it made him hop a little. But he
had only two days more to wait, and he thought that he could manage it.

Probably he would have succeeded, if it hadn’t happened that Mr.
Prescott needed some change. He told Billy to “sprint” to the bank for
three rolls of dimes and two rolls of nickels.

Billy made good time on his way to the bank, handed in his five-dollar
bill, took his five rolls of money, and started back.

He made good time on his way back until he reached the bridge, about
three minutes’ walk from the mill gate. Then he hit a board that had
been put on as a patch, and off came that right sole, so that it went
flop--flop--flop.

He had to hold his feet very high in order to walk at all; but he
flopped along, until he stubbed his left toe and fell down flat.

The fall was so hard that it threw one roll of dimes out of his pocket.
Just as he had stretched out till he almost had the roll, it began to
turn over and over, and went off the edge of the bridge into the river.
Billy saw it go.

Pulling himself up quickly, he put both hands into his pockets to hold
the rest of the money in, and hurried on as fast as he could.

As he flopped through the gate, he half heard Tom Murphy say:

“Those nails kinder went back on you, didn’t they, William?”

When Mr. Prescott took the money, Billy held up his foot so that Mr.
Prescott could see his shoe, then he told him about the money.

Mr. Prescott seemed to take in the situation, and he seemed not to mind
much about the money, for he said:

“We shall have to charge that up to profit and loss.”

Billy found a piece of string to tie his sole on, and, that very night,
as soon as he got home, Aunt Mary gave him a pair of new, rubber-soled
shoes.

That was Thursday. The next Monday--Mr. Prescott paid the men on
Monday--when Mr. Prescott gave Billy his little brown envelope, Billy
said:

“If you please, sir, I shall feel better if you will take out the
dollar that I lost.”

Then something happened. It seems as though Satan must have got into
Mr. Prescott’s mind, and must have had, for a moment, his own wicked
way. That seems to be the only way to explain how a man like Mr.
Prescott could say such a thing as he did to a boy like Billy.

Mr. Prescott thought that Billy said, “I shall feel better” because his
conscience was troubling him. He looked down at Billy’s new shoes.

“New shoes,” he said rather gruffly.

It didn’t sound a bit like Mr. Prescott.

Billy wanted to tell him how long Aunt Mary had been saving up money to
buy those shoes, but he had been practicing so hard on keeping his lips
shut that he didn’t say anything.

“Take your envelope,” said Mr. Prescott.

After Billy had started for the door, Mr. Prescott added:

“I rather think that the firm can stand a pair of shoes.”

Billy’s back was toward him. Perhaps, if he had been looking right at
Billy, he wouldn’t have said it; but say it he did.

Billy didn’t, just then, take it in. He said, “Good-bye, Mr. Prescott,”
as he always did when he went home.

Miss King’s keys kept going--clickety-clickety-click.

There was another side to it. When a good man like Mr. Prescott grows
interested in a boy, and, about the time when he feels pretty sure that
the boy is all right, something happens, especially about money, the
man feels terribly. Then any man is likely to say hard things.

Billy had never even heard about such a thing as “conscience money,”
but Mr. Prescott had had an experience with a man whose conscience
didn’t work at the right time.

Billy felt uncomfortable when he went out the door; but he was fully
half-way home before he realized that Mr. Prescott thought that he
had told a lie about the roll of dimes; thought that he had---- Billy
couldn’t finish that sentence.

He hardly spoke to Uncle John all the way home. Then, though Aunt Mary
had a special treat--the little cakes covered with white frosting, the
kind that Billy liked best--he could hardly eat one.

He felt worse and worse. Of course Uncle John knew that something was
wrong, but he knew that a boy can’t always talk about his heartaches.
Then, if it were business, he didn’t want to tempt him to tell. So
Uncle John didn’t ask any questions.

They sat on the steps a long time--so much longer than usual that Aunt
Mary called:

“William Wallace, it’s time to come in.”

When she said that, Uncle John said he was so thirsty that he should
have to go in to get some water.

Billy heard Uncle John call Aunt Mary into the kitchen to find him a
glass. Then he came out again, and sat down close by Billy.

They sat there till long after the clock struck nine. Then Billy said:

“Uncle John, if anybody thought something b-b--something about you, and
it wasn’t so, what would you do?”

“I would,” answered Uncle John, slowly, “keep right on working, and
leave that to God.”

Then he put his arm around Billy’s shoulders, drew him up close, and
said again, slowly, “I would leave that to God.”

After they had sat a minute longer, they both went into the house.

Billy wished that night, even more than usual, that he and Uncle John
might say their prayers together, the way he and his father used to do.
But he did the best he could alone.

He said his prayers very slowly and very carefully. Then he said them
all over again, and climbed into bed.

After the house was dark, Billy heard Uncle John come to his door.
Billy didn’t speak, but he heard Uncle John say something. Perhaps,
though he said it very softly, Uncle John hoped that he would hear him
when he said softly:

“Eh, Billy, little lad!”




[Illustration]




CHAPTER IX

BILLY STANDS BY


When Miss King came into the office the next morning she had a large
bunch of bachelor’s buttons in her hand. They were blue--all shades of
blue--and they looked very pretty against the clear white of her dress.
She had hardly taken off her hat before the telephone rang hard.

Billy heard her say, “Yes, Mr. Prescott.”

“Mr. Prescott says he’s not coming to the office till after lunch,” she
said, turning to Billy. “It’s something about the new part of the mill.

“We got along all right the other day, didn’t we? I was anxious all for
nothing, wasn’t I, William?

“Now, please get me some water for the flowers, and we’ll settle down
to work.”

Billy didn’t feel, that morning, much like talking to anybody, not even
to Miss King, so he didn’t say anything.

When he brought back the tall glass vase, Miss King took three of the
bluest flowers and broke off the stems.

“I should like to put these in your buttonhole, William,” she said.
“They’ll look pretty against your gray coat.

“August is late for bachelor’s buttons; we shall have to make the most
of these. Really,” she went on, as she fastened them with a pin on the
under side of his lapel, “they’re just the color of your eyes.”

Miss King didn’t usually say very much. It was a surprise to Billy to
have her keep on talking.

“How nice the office looks, William! We never had a boy before that
knew how to dust in anything but streaks.”

“My Aunt Mary,” said Billy, speaking at last, “is very particular. She
showed me how to dust.”

Then Miss King sorted the orders, and Billy started out with them.

It was still very hot. The latest thing that Mr. Prescott had done to
try to make the office a little cooler was to move a pile of boxes and
to open an old door at the other end of the corridor opposite the door
with the great key.

That door hadn’t been opened for a long time. Hardly anybody had
realized that there was a door on that side. It opened over the end of
an old canal that had been used in his grandfather’s day. Filling up
that “old ditch,” as Mr. Prescott called it, was one of the things that
he was planning to do.

When he had the door opened, he put up a danger notice, and left in
place, across the door, an old beam that had once been used as a safety
guard.

Billy stood in the corridor a moment, and looked back through the old
door. If it ever rained, that would be a pretty view.

But the old willow beyond the ditch was green on one side, even if it
was dead on the other where its branches stuck out like--like----

Billy, trying to decide what they did look like, began, almost
unconsciously, to walk toward the door.

By the time that he decided that the branches looked like the antlers
of two great deer, standing with their heads close together, Billy
reached the door.

He stood a moment looking down at the old canal. He was surprised to
see how far below the door the canal really lay. The dry spot at the
end had some ugly stones in it, too. Just as well to have a place like
that filled in.

Looking again at the old willow, Billy turned and went slowly back down
the corridor and out the great door.

When Mr. Prescott finally came back, Billy was on his afternoon rounds.

Things were very quiet, but that was to be expected at that time of the
day.

Were things unusually quiet?

Just then Mr. Prescott heard a faint cry. In an instant he was at the
door.

Somebody was crying, “Fire!”

Who was he? Where was he? Why didn’t he call louder?

He met Billy, who was fairly flying back from the other end of the
yard, with his hands at his throat as if he were trying to make the
sound come out.

“The new part is on fire!” he cried; “the new part of the mill is on
fire!”

Mr. Prescott rushed to the fire alarm.

Billy kept on to the office and burst in, crying, “The new part is on
fire!”

Miss King started for the door. Mr. Prescott had given her orders what
to do if there ever should be a fire.

Billy himself was part way down the corridor when something in his head
began to say faintly:

“Stand--by--your--job--every--minute--that--you--belong--on--it!”

Though Billy slowed down a little, he did not stop, but kept right on
until he reached the door, and had one foot out.

Then the graphophone in his mind began again, a little louder than
before:

“Stand--by--your--job--every--minute--that--you--belong--on--it!”

Billy drew his foot back. He felt as though he must do something, so he
shut the great door. He turned and stood against it for a minute. Then
he started slowly down the corridor.

The graphophone had stopped; but Billy’s quick ears heard another
sound. Somebody was trying to open the great door!

Billy remembered the little closet. He could see the office from that.
He hurried on, and had barely slipped into it when the door opened.

In came the man with the fierce black eyes and the coal black hair, and
he was carrying something in both hands.

Billy fairly held his breath. The door was a little too far open, but
he didn’t dare to touch it.

The door _was_ too far open. It was open so far that, hitting it as he
passed, the man gave it an angry kick.

The door went to so hard that Billy heard the click of the spring lock
as it fastened the door, and made him a prisoner in the closet.

Keep still he must till the man was out of the way. That was the only
thing to do. Billy took out his jack-knife. It felt friendly, so he
opened it.

Sooner than he expected he heard the man come out, heard him go heavily
down the corridor, and heard him close the great door.

Cracks between the boards let in light enough for Billy to find the
lock. He began to pry away at it with his knife. He thought he had
started it a little, when snap went the blade.

Then he tried the other, working a little more carefully; but, in a
moment, snap went that blade, broken close to the handle.

He tried kicking the boards where he saw the largest cracks, but not a
board could he move.

Then he grew so excited that he hardly knew what he was doing.

What was going on in the office? Was that on fire? He threw himself
against the sides of the closet, one after the other.

He wasn’t sure whether it was his head or the closet that began to
rock. It seemed to be the closet.

Once more he threw himself against the back of the closet. That time he
was sure it was the closet that rocked!

He threw himself three times, four times, five times. Suddenly he
landed on his head in the top of the closet on a heap of clothes. Light
was coming in from somewhere. His head was rocking so that he could
hardly move, but, in a minute, he managed to turn and to crawl out of
the bottom of the closet, where the cleats had given way.

It was easier, just then, for him to crawl than it was to walk. So he
crawled across to the office, reached up, and opened the door.

Surprised he certainly was, for everything seemed to be all right.

Billy, beginning to feel pretty sore in several places, pulled himself
up into Mr. Prescott’s chair.

Then he heard a faint tick, tick, tick.

No, it wasn’t the clock. Billy had kept his ears open too long not to
know that.

Where was it? What was it? It seemed very near!

Billy looked under the desk. Nothing there but the waste basket.

His heart was going thump, thump. But, when a boy is standing by his
job, he doesn’t stop for a thumping heart.

Billy didn’t. He took hold of the basket. It was very heavy. The
ticking was very near.

Then Billy knew!

It was what Uncle John called an “infernal machine,” with clock works
inside!

Billy dug down among the papers till he found the thing. He took it in
both hands and pulled it out--it was a sort of box. He started for the
door. All he could think of was that he must take the infernal thing
away from Mr. Prescott’s desk.

Out he went with it. The old door was still open. Billy, holding the
box in his arms, made a frantic dash for the door.

When he reached it, he leaned against the old beam and, gathering all
his strength, threw the box over into the old dry ditch. He heard the
box fall.

Then, with a creaking sound, the old beam broke from its rusty
fastenings and followed the box.

After that there was another fall, for the boy that had thrown the box
went down with the beam.

But that was a fall that Billy did not hear.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER X

WILLIAM WALLACE


The next thing that Billy knew he was waking up, not wide awake, but a
little at a time.

The room seemed very white, and there was somebody in white standing by
his bed. No, it wasn’t Miss King, for this woman had something white on
her head.

Then he felt somebody holding his hand and saying, “Billy, little
Billy.”

He woke up a little further. He tried to say, “Aunt Mary,” but the
words wouldn’t come.

The woman in white took hold of Aunt Mary, and led her out of the room.

Then he saw something large in the window. He wasn’t at all sure that
he wasn’t dreaming about mountains. But this mountain had a round top
and, while he watched it, it moved. Billy woke up enough to see that it
was somebody standing in the window.

Billy knew only one person who could fill up a window like that. He
tried his voice again. This time he made it go.

“That you, Mr. Prescott?” he said, his voice going up and up till it
ended in a funny little quaver.

Then the mountain came over to him. It _was_ Mr. Prescott.

Billy, looking up, spoke again, very slowly:

“The dimes _did_ roll into the river, Mr. Prescott.”

“Hang it!” said Mr. Prescott. “Of course they did!”

The nurse nodded. “He’s kept talking about that,” she said. “We thought
perhaps you’d know.”

Mr. Prescott started to go close to the bed.

The nurse put out her hand.

“Hang it!” said Mr. Prescott. “I was a brute. Can you ever forgive me,
Billy?”

“Sure, sir,” answered Billy.

His voice sounded so strong that the nurse told Mr. Prescott that she
was afraid he was exciting the patient.

Billy said, “Please stay.”

Then the nurse told Mr. Prescott that he might stay ten minutes if he
wouldn’t talk to the patient.

Billy tried to smile at Mr. Prescott, but he was so tired that he shut
his eyes instead.

Next time it was Uncle John who was holding his hand, but Uncle John
didn’t smile.

“Uncle John,” said Billy, “what’s the matter with me?”

“Just a few broken bones, Billy, my lad,” answered Uncle John.

“Which ones?” asked Billy.

“Just a left arm and a left leg.”

“That all?” asked Billy.

After that they wouldn’t let him see anybody. There were two nurses
instead of one, and three doctors--“specialists” Billy heard his own
nurse say.

After that there were two doctors every day: a doctor with white hair,
and a doctor with light brown hair, parted in the middle.

The doctor with the white hair seemed to think more about Billy than he
did about his bones, for he talked to Billy while he was feeling around.

The young doctor seemed to think more about the bones. But Billy liked
him, too, for one day when they were hurting him terribly the young
doctor said:

“You’re a game sort of chap.”

Billy wasn’t quite sure what “game” meant, but he kept right on
gritting his teeth till they were through.

The first day that the young doctor began to come alone, he said:

“Nurse, how are the contusions getting along?”

“They are much lighter in color, doctor, this morning,” answered the
nurse.

“I don’t understand,” said the doctor, standing very straight and
putting his forefinger on his chin, “how a fall of the nature of
this one, practically on the left side, could have produced so many
contusions on the right.”

“What are contusions?” asked Billy.

The doctor began to talk about stasis of the circulation following
superficial injuries.

“Show me one,” said Billy.

When the nurse showed him one on his right arm, just below the
shoulder, Billy said:

“Oh, one of my black and blue spots! That must have been when I was
playing caged lion.”

That time the doctor and the nurse were the ones who didn’t understand.

Then Billy laughed, a happy boyish laugh. He hadn’t laughed that way
since he and his father used to have frolics together.

The doctor looked at him a minute, then he said:

“Nurse, to-morrow this young chap may have company for half an hour.”

“I’m glad to hear that, doctor,” said the nurse. “I’ll go right away
to tell Mr. Prescott. He’s fairly worn me out with telephoning to know
when we would let him come.”

At ten o’clock the next morning Mr. Prescott came.

After he had answered Billy’s questions about the fire, and had told
him that the new roof was almost finished, he took a newspaper out of
his pocket.

He folded it across, then down on both sides, and held it up in front
of Billy.

There it was, in big head-lines:

  “BILLY BRADFORD SAVES PRESCOTT MILL”

Then Mr. Prescott read him what the paper said. They had even put in
about finding him with the flowers in his buttonhole.

“Those,” interrupted Billy, “were Miss King’s flowers.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Prescott; “she cried, right in the office, when she
read that.”

Then Billy told Mr. Prescott about the closet, and all about the box,
and asked him to pull out the drawer in the little stand by his bed.

There lay his jack-knife. Somebody had shut up all that was left of the
blades, and there was so little left that they couldn’t be opened.

Mr. Prescott put the knife into Billy’s hand.

“That was a good knife,” said Billy, looking at it with affection.

“I think,” said Mr. Prescott, “that you really ought to let me have
that knife.”

Billy hesitated a moment, then he said:

“If you please, Mr. Prescott, I should like to keep that knife. It has
been a good friend to me.”

Mr. Prescott took the little white hand, knife and all, in his own
strong, firm fingers.

“I want it, Billy, because you have been a good friend to me.”

Billy’s face flushed so suddenly red that Mr. Prescott was afraid that
something was going to happen to Billy. He called, “Nurse!”

“I’m all right,” said Billy.

He grew red again as he said:

“Mr. Prescott, I want to tell you something.”

Mr. Prescott said: “Let me fix your pillows first.”

Of course he got them all mixed up, and the nurse had to come. She
looked at her watch, and then at Mr. Prescott, but she didn’t say
anything.

Then Mr. Prescott sat close by the bed with Billy’s hand lying in his,
and Billy told him about William Wallace.

Mr. Prescott looked a little surprised, then he said:

“William Wallace seems to know a good deal, doesn’t he?”

Billy, in honor, had to nod his head, but he grew very sober. Perhaps,
after all, Mr. Prescott would like William Wallace better than he liked
him.

“I don’t really approve,” said Mr. Prescott, “of his calling you a
coward, though that sometimes makes a boy try to be brave.

“One thing is sure, he can’t ever call you that again, can he?”

Billy shook his head.

“Personally,” continued Mr. Prescott, almost as if he were talking
business, “I had rather be saved by you than by William Wallace. Can
you guess why?”

Billy shook his head again, but this time he smiled.

“Because,” said Mr. Prescott, “you did it out of your heart. William
Wallace would have done it out of his head.”

Billy smiled serenely. Everything--broken jack-knife, broken arm,
broken leg--was exactly all right now.

“Really and truly,” Mr. Prescott went on, “there are two of everybody,
only most people don’t seem to know it: one is his heart, and the other
is his head.

“If I were you, I would be on good terms with William Wallace--it
generally takes both to decide. I’d take him as a sort of brother, but
I wouldn’t let him rule.”

“No,” said Billy.

Then Mr. Prescott saw the nurse coming, and he hurried off.

The next time that Uncle John came Billy asked him what had become of
the man--“the poor man,” Billy called him.

“That man,” said Uncle John, his mouth growing rather firm, “was found
out in his sin.

“He undertook a little too much when he set fire to one end of the
mill, and then tried to blow up the main office. That’s too much for
one man to do at one time, especially when he’s a man that leaves
things around.”

“Oh!” said Billy.

“Now,” said Uncle John, “he’s where he’s having his actions regulated.”

“I hope,” said Billy, “that they’ll be good to him.”

“Billy,” said Uncle John, very decidedly, “all that you are called upon
to do about that man is to believe that he couldn’t think straight.

“But the way this world is made makes it necessary, when a man can’t
think straighter than to try to destroy the very mill where he’s
working, for some one else to do a part of his thinking for him.

“That’s what the men that make the laws are trying to do. They are
trying to help men to think straight.”

Billy was listening hard. It was a good while since he had heard one of
Uncle John’s lectures.

“You know, Billy, my lad, that there are a lot of things we have to
leave to God.”

“Yes, Uncle John.”

“There are a lot more that we have to leave to the law.

“The best thing for a boy like you and a man like me to do is to leave
things where they belong.”

“All right, Uncle John, I will,” said Billy, giving a little sigh of
relief as if he were glad to have that off his mind.

The next day when Mr. Prescott came, he told Billy that, the day after
that, he was to be moved to Mr. Prescott’s house on the hill.

Billy looked a little sober. He had been thinking a great deal about
home.

“I’m all alone in that big house,” said Mr. Prescott.

“Then,” said Billy, “I’ll come.”

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XI

THE TREASURE ROOM


They took Billy to Mr. Prescott’s house in his machine.
They had to take a good many pillows and they planned to take an extra
nurse, but the young doctor said that he was going up that way, and
could just as well help.

Billy and the doctor were getting to be very good friends.

“He’s different,” Billy had confided to Uncle John, “but I like him a
lot.”

“Nice people often are different,” said Uncle John.

Billy was so much better that he had some fun, while they were putting
him into the auto, about his “stiff half,” as he called his left side.

“You just wait till I get that arm and that leg to working,” he said.
“They’ll have to work over time.”

They put him in a large room with broad windows, where he could look
down on the river and across at the mountains. There was a large brass
bed in the room, but Mr. Prescott had had a hospital bed sent up.

“You’d have hard work to find me in that bed,” said Billy to the nurse,
“wouldn’t you?”

It was a beautiful room. One of the maids told Billy that it had been
Mr. Prescott’s mother’s room, and that he had always kept it as she had
left it.

For the first week Billy feasted his eyes on color.

The walls of the room were soft brown; the paint was the color of
cream. There were two sets of curtains: one a soft old blue, and over
that another hanging of all sorts of colors. It took Billy a whole day
to pick out the pattern on those curtains.

There was a mahogany dressing table, and there was a wonderful
rug--soft shades of rose in the middle, and ever so many shades of blue
in the border.

There was a fireplace with a shining brass fender. And there were--oh,
so many things!

Then Billy spent almost another week on the pictures. But when he
wanted to rest his eyes he looked at his old friends, the mountains,
lying far across the river.

Mr. Prescott, too, liked the mountains. He came to sit by him in
the evening, and they had real friendly times together watching the
mountains fade away into the night, and seeing the electric lights
flash out, one after another, all along the river.

Finally the doctors took off the splints. They had a great time doing
it, testing his joints to see whether or not they would work.

Then Billy found that, as the young doctor said, there had been a “tall
lot of worrying done about those bones.”

This time the white-haired doctor paid more attention to his bones than
he did to Billy. He didn’t say anything till he went to put his glasses
back in the case. Then he straightened up, and said:

“I’m happy to tell you, young man, that those joints will work all
right after they get used to working again.”

The next day Billy went down the long flight of stairs, with Mr.
Prescott on one side, and the nurse on the other, to the great library,
right under the room where he had been.

“Feel pretty well, now that you’re down?” asked Mr. Prescott, after the
nurse had gone up-stairs.

“Sure, sir,” answered Billy.

“Then follow me,” said Mr. Prescott, opening a door at the end of the
library.

Billy followed, but he had hardly stepped in before he stepped back.

“Why, Billy,” said Mr. Prescott, coming quickly back to him, “I didn’t
mean to frighten you. We’ll stay in the library.”

Now the doctor had told Mr. Prescott that Billy mustn’t be frightened
by anything if they could help it, for he’d been through about all a
boy’s nerves could stand. So Mr. Prescott drew Billy over to the big
sofa, fixed some pillows around him, and put a foot-rest under his leg.

Then Mr. Prescott settled himself in a great chair as though he had
nothing in the world to do except to talk to Billy.

“That,” said Mr. Prescott, “is my treasure room. When I go in there, I
think of brave men, and of how they helped the world along. What made
you step back?”

“Because,” answered Billy, half ashamed, “I thought I saw a man in the
corner pointing something at me.”

“I ought,” said Mr. Prescott, “to have thought of that before I took
you into the room.

“I’ve been trying, for some time, to make that old suit of armor and
that spear look like a knight standing there, ready for action. I must
have, at last, succeeded, but I’m sorry that it startled you.

“You see I’m naturally interested in weapons of war because they are
all made of steel or iron.”

“Battle-ships, too,” said Billy.

“Yes,” said Mr. Prescott. “But you mustn’t forget the great naval
battles that were won with ships of wood.

“There’s one thing in that room,” Mr. Prescott went on, “that I am sure
you will like to see. It is my great-great-grandfather’s musket.”

“Oh,” said Billy, “I didn’t know that you had a
great-great-grandfather.”

“I did,” said Mr. Prescott, just as quietly as if Billy had been
talking sense. “He was a brave man, too. That is the musket that he had
when he was with General Washington at Valley Forge.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Billy again.

“Know about Valley Forge, do you?”

“A little,” answered Billy, very humbly.

“That’s enough to start on,” said Mr. Prescott.

Billy could almost imagine that Uncle John was talking. Billy spent a
great deal more time every day than anybody realized in thinking about
his Uncle John.

“Perhaps you don’t know, many people don’t,” said Mr. Prescott, “that
the first name of that place was Valley Creek. It was changed to Valley
Forge because a large forge plant was established there. It was one of
the first places in this state where they made iron and steel.

“By the way, George Washington’s father was a maker of pig iron down in
Virginia.”

“Oh!” said Billy. “There seem to be a lot of things to know about iron.”

“There’s really no end to them,” said Mr. Prescott. “They begin way
back in history. Did you ever read about Goliath the giant?”

“My father used to read those stories to me,” answered Billy, “out of a
great big Bible.”

“Was it like this one?” asked Mr. Prescott, getting up quickly and
bringing him, from the library table, a great Bible, covered with light
brown leather.

“That looks almost like ours,” answered Billy.

“This,” said Mr. Prescott, “is the one my mother used to read to me.
There’s a great deal about iron in it,” he added, as he put it away
carefully.

“To come back to Goliath,” said Mr. Prescott. “His spear had a head of
iron that weighed six hundred shekels.

“Then there was that iron bedstead of Og, king of Bashan. Ever hear of
him?”

“I don’t seem,” answered Billy, “to remember about him.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have remembered,” said Mr. Prescott, “if I hadn’t
been so interested in iron.”

“That,” said Billy, “was probably on account of your grandfather, and
your father,” he added quickly.

“There’s a great deal about iron in the Bible,” said Mr. Prescott.
“Only four or five pages over in Genesis there is a verse about a man
named Tubal-Cain, who was a master-worker in brass and iron.

“Then there are some things in mythology that you ought to know, now
that you’re interested in iron. One of them is that the old Romans, who
imagined all sorts of gods, said that iron was discovered by Vulcan.
They said, too, that he forged the thunderbolts of Jupiter.

“Now, then, Billy, how about my treasure room?”

“Ready, sir,” answered Billy, working himself out from among his
pillows.

“Once,” said Mr. Prescott, walking close by Billy, “I went into a room
something like this, only it had many more things in it. The room was
in Sir Walter Scott’s house. He had one of Napoleon’s pistols from
Waterloo.

“He called his room an armory. I generally call mine my ‘treasure
room.’”

“I think I like armory better,” said Billy.

“Then,” said Mr. Prescott, “will you walk into my armory?”

“First of all,” said Billy, “I want to see that gun--musket.”

“Here it is,” said Mr. Prescott. “There,” he added, pointing to a
picture in an oval brass frame, “is my great-great-grandfather.”

“Oh!” said Billy.

Then Mr. Prescott knew that Billy had never before seen a silhouette.

“That kind of picture,” he said, “does make a man look as black as his
own hat, though it is often a good profile. I used to make them myself.
Some night I’ll make one of you.

“Now that you’ve seen the musket, I think that you had better take a
look at this suit of armor that I have been trying to make stand up
here like a knight.

“This coat of mail is made of links, you see. Sometimes they were made
of scales of iron linked together.

“The work that those old smiths did is really wonderful, especially
when you remember that their only tools were hammer, pincers, chisel,
and tongs. It took both time and patience to weld every one of those
links together.”

“I don’t think I understand what weld means,” said Billy.

“When iron is heated to a white heat,” said Mr. Prescott, “it can be
hammered together into one piece. Most metals have to be soldered, you
know. The blacksmiths generally use a powder that will make the iron
weld more easily, because it makes the iron soften more quickly, but
iron is its own solder.

“You’d better sit down here while I explain a little about this suit of
armor; then you’ll know what you’re reading about when you come to a
knight.

“I suppose that every boy knows what a helmet and a vizor are; they
learn about that from seeing firemen.”

“And policemen,” said Billy.

“Only the helmets of the knights covered their faces and ended in
guards for their necks. I dare say that you don’t know what a gorget
is.”

“No,” said Billy, “I don’t.”

“That is the piece of armor that protected the throat. Here is the
cuirass or breast-plate, and the tassets that covered the thighs.
They’re hooked to the cuirass. And here are the greaves for the shins.
There are names for all the arm pieces, too, but we’ll let those go
just now.

“This shield, you see, is wood covered with iron, and part of the
handle inside is wood. A man must have weighed a great deal when he had
a full suit of armor on, and he must have been splendid to look at and
rather hard to kill.

“Those old smiths certainly made a fine art of their work in iron. They
got plenty of credit for it, too. In the Anglo-Saxon times they were
really treated as officers of rank.

“When a man was depending on his sword to protect his family, he
naturally respected a man who could make good swords. The smiths sort
of held society together.”

Billy, looking around the room, saw that one side had spears and
shields and helmets hung all over it; and on the wall at the end were
pistols, bows and arrows, and some dreadful knives.

“Did all those,” he asked, pointing at the end of the room, “kill
somebody?”

“Ask it the other way,” said Mr. Prescott; “did they all protect
somebody? Then I can safely say that they did, for any foe would think
twice before he attacked a man in mail. These things were all made
because they were needed.”

“What do you suppose put the armorers out of business?”

“I don’t know,” answered Billy.

“Gunpowder,” said Mr. Prescott. “A man could be blown up, armor and
all.”

“Then they had to make guns,” said Billy.

“And they’ve been at that ever since,” said Mr. Prescott.

“Come over to this cabinet, and I’ll show you my special treasure.

“Shut your eyes, Billy, and think of walls in a desert long enough and
high enough to shut in a whole city.”

Billy shut his eyes. “I see the walls,” he said.

“Now, just inside the wall, think a garden with great beds of roses.”

“Blush roses?” queried Billy.

“Damask,” replied Mr. Prescott; “pink, pretty good size.”

“That’s done!” said Billy.

“Now, in that garden, think an Arab chief, a sheik, mounted on a
beautiful Arabian horse, and--open your eyes!”

“Here is his sword!”

“I saw him clearly!” exclaimed Billy, his eyes flying wide open.

[Illustration: “HERE IS HIS SWORD”]

“My!” he said, “but that’s a beauty!”

“It is,” said Mr. Prescott. “Look!”

Then he took the hilt in his right hand and the point in his left, and
began to bend the point toward the hilt.

“Don’t,” cried Billy. “You’ll break it!”

“The tip and the hilt of the best of the old swords were supposed to
come together,” said Mr. Prescott.

“See, this has an inscription in Arabic.”

“I have a genuine Toledo, too, but you’ve been in here long enough.
Let’s go back into the library. You may come in here whenever you like.
Mornings, I think, would be the best time.”

When Billy was comfortably settled among his pillows, with the Damascus
sword on the sofa by him, Mr. Prescott said:

“Men, in the olden time, thought so much of their swords that they
often named them, and had them baptized by the priest. The great
emperor Charlemagne had a sword named ‘Joyeuse.’

“Sometimes, too, the old bards sang about swords and their makers.”

“Tell me,” said Billy, “how they made swords.”

“The people way over in the East understood the process of converting
iron into steel, but in those days they had plenty of gold and very
little steel, so swords were sometimes made of gold with only an edge
of steel.

“The steel swords were made by hammering little piles of steel plates
together. They were heated, hammered, and doubled over, end to end,
until the layers of steel in a single sword ran up into the millions.

“Now, we’ll come back to the present time, and I’ll show you something
that I brought home yesterday to put in my treasure room.”

Billy watched eagerly, while Mr. Prescott took a package from the
library table, and opened it.

Then, in delight, he exclaimed:

“The great iron key!”

“The same,” said Mr. Prescott, “and glad enough I am to have it here.

“When I gave Tom the new key, he didn’t look altogether happy. I think
the fellow really has enjoyed having the care of this one.”

“I suppose,” said Billy, “that the new one is so small that he will be
afraid of losing it. They don’t make such large keys nowadays.”

“That statement may be true in general,” said Mr. Prescott, “but the
fact is that the new key is as large as this.”

Then Mr. Prescott stopped talking, but he looked right at Billy.

“You don’t mean,” said Billy, after thinking for a minute as hard as he
could, “that you have had a key made, do you?”

“That is the meaning that I intended to convey,” answered Mr. Prescott.
“But I’m not going to tease a fellow that is down-stairs for the first
time, so I’ll tell you, right away, that Mr. John Bradford made the
casting for the new key, and he used this for a pattern.”

“Oh!” said Billy, smiling.

“You didn’t like it very well, did you, Billy,” asked Mr. Prescott,
“when I put that key back in the door?”

“No,” answered Billy, “I didn’t.”

“Just at that time,” said Mr. Prescott, “a great many things had to be
considered. I decided that it was better to risk the key than to risk
letting the man know that we knew what had happened.

“You never knew either, did you, how many nights after that I spent in
the office?”

“Honest?” asked Billy, opening his eyes very wide.

“Running a mill, I’d have you understand, Billy Bradford,” said Mr.
Prescott, “is no easy job.”

“It doesn’t seem to be,” said Billy, just as earnestly as if he had
been a man.

“I must go,” said Mr. Prescott. “I had almost forgotten that I am one
of the modern workers in iron.

“Billy,” he said suddenly, turning as he reached the door, “did you
ever know anybody by the name of Smith?”

Billy’s answer was a merry laugh.

“You needn’t laugh, Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott. “If you do,
perhaps I won’t tell you something.”

“Do,” said Billy.

“People,” said Mr. Prescott, coming part way back into the room,
“didn’t always have last names. When they came into fashion, all the
workers on anvils were given Smith for a last name. That’s where the
Smiths came from!”

“Honest?” asked Billy.

“Fact,” said Mr. Prescott, as he went through the door.

When the nurse came down a little later, she found Billy fast asleep
among the cushions, and his hand was lying on the hilt of the Damascus
blade.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XII

THOMAS MURPHY, TIMEKEEPER

“There’s a garden,” said Mr. Prescott, the next morning.

“_Is_ there a garden?” interrupted Billy, eagerly.

“There’s a garden,” Mr. Prescott went on, in his steady, even tone,
“down behind this house, and I have decided to give a garden party. Are
there any ladies that you would like to invite?”

“All the ladies that I have in the world,” said Billy, soberly, “are
Aunt Mary and Miss King.”

“Then invite them,” said Mr. Prescott. “I think that, now you’re
well----”

Billy waved his arm, and thrust out his foot.

“Now you are well,” continued Mr. Prescott, “it will be a good plan for
you to have some company.”

“When’s that party going to be?” asked Billy, very eagerly.

“I thought,” answered Mr. Prescott, “that perhaps we could manage it
for to-morrow.

“Do you think it will be best to have the ladies alone, or shall we
invite some men?”

“All the men I have,” said Billy, “are Uncle John and the young doctor
and Mr. Thomas Murphy.”

“How would it do,” said Mr. Prescott, “to have just your Aunt Mary and
Miss King? Your Uncle John can come at any time. Perhaps you would
enjoy Tom more if he were to come alone.”

“I think,” said Billy, reflectively, “that would be a good plan.”

Then Billy told Mr. Prescott what Tom had said about being “nothing and
nobody.”

“That’s good!” said Mr. Prescott, laughing. Then he added gravely,
“Tom’s a faithful man.”

There _was_ a garden. If Billy had ever dreamed about a garden, that
would have been the garden of his dreams. Billy had never seen a garden
like that.

It didn’t show at all from the front of the house; neither could it be
seen from Billy’s windows; but there was a long garden with a round
summer house at the end.

Because it was a city garden it had a high board fence on three sides.
The fence was gray. Against it at the end, just behind the summer
house, were rows of hollyhocks--pink, white, yellow, and rose--standing
tall and straight, like sentinels on duty guard.

There were beds of asters, each color by itself, and great heaps of
hydrangeas, almost tumbling over the lawn.

There were queer little trees. When Billy said that they looked like
the trees on Japanese lanterns, Mr. Prescott said that they were real
Japanese trees.

Billy didn’t see the whole of that garden until after he had been in it
a great many times. After he did see it all, it became the garden of
his dreams.

The next afternoon Mr. Prescott sent the auto for Aunt Mary and Miss
King, and they both came.

Billy had never seen Aunt Mary look so well. She had on a lavender
and white striped muslin, with white lace and some tiny black velvet
buttons on it. Uncle John liked to have her wear lavender.

Miss King had on a pretty white dress, a different kind from what she
wore in the office. Her hat was white, trimmed with blue, and her white
silk gloves went up to her elbows.

Billy took them out through the drawing-room balcony, and down the
steps into the garden.

They didn’t talk very much while they walked around, but a great deal
of politeness went on in the garden that afternoon.

Aunt Mary smiled and kept calling him “Billy.” He counted till he got
up to ten times, then he was so busy showing them the flowers that he
forgot to count.

When they went into the summer house where the waitress had set a
little table, they all sat down on the same side. That brought Billy
between Aunt Mary and Miss King.

He helped them to ice-cream and cakes. There really wasn’t much helping
to do, for the ice-cream was made like strawberries, leaves and all,
only each one was about three times as large as strawberries grow.

They sat there a long time, keeping on being polite; but not a bit of
the politeness was wasted, for they were all very happy when they were
through.

Then Mr. Prescott came in the auto. After Aunt Mary and Miss King had
gone, Mr. Prescott said that he should like a strawberry, so Billy had
a chance to be polite to Mr. Prescott, too.

Altogether, Billy had a delightful party.

Mr. Prescott brought word that Thomas Murphy would come the next day,
because that would be Saturday, and the mill would be closed in the
afternoon.

Thomas Murphy came, clean shaven, and dressed in his best.

“Well, William,” he said, shaking Billy’s hand hard, “how are you,
William?”

“Don’t you think, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy, “that I look pretty well?”

“Better than I ever expected to see you, William, after that day.”

“Mr. Prescott,” said Billy, “thinks we’d better not talk very much
about that.”

“No, William,” said Thomas Murphy, “we won’t talk about the martyr side
of it. But there’s something we will talk about. That’s why I’ve come.
There are things, William, that you ought to know.”

Seeing how warm Thomas Murphy was growing, Billy suggested that they
had better go out into the garden.

“That’s a good idea, William,” said he, limping after Billy.

After he was settled in a comfortable garden chair, Thomas Murphy hung
a handkerchief with a figured purple border over his knee, clasped his
hands across his chest, and began again.

“William,” he said solemnly, “while you were a-lyin’ onconscious in
that hospital, I was a-thinkin’ about what you had asked me about bein’
a friend to the super.

“Every time I read that bulletin that was posted every day on that
door, ‘onconscious still,’ I thought some more.

“The day that said ‘dangerous,’ I finished thinkin’.

“‘Thomas Murphy, timekeeper,’ said I sharp, ‘it’s time that you did
something more than mark time; it’s time you found out whether you’re
a-markin’ friends or foes.’

“When the men came in the next morning, they just filed past that
bulletin. Then says I, ‘Thomas Murphy, act. The time to act has come.’

“Somethin’ in me said, ‘Suppose you should be a martyr like William.’

“‘Suppose I be a martyr,’ said I. ‘Am I a-goin’ to have William a-lyin’
dangerous, and a man like me a-sittin’ still?’”

Billy moved in his chair, and Thomas Murphy paused for breath.

“That noon,” he continued, “I told Peter Martin to blow the whistle
three times. The super a-bein’ at the hospital, I gave the order
myself. What do three whistles mean, William?”

“All men come to the gate,” answered Billy promptly.

“They came,” said Thomas Murphy. “I got up on a box, so I could see the
whole of ’em.

“‘Men,’ said I, ‘that boy, William, is lyin’ onconscious, dangerous.
He’s a-lyin’ there because the super had an enemy.

“‘Where would you get the food you’re a-eatin’ and the shoes you’re
a-wearin’, if there wasn’t a mill to work in? Where would that mill be
if it wasn’t for the super’s money?

“‘Are there any more enemies in this mill?

“‘To-morrow mornin’,’ said I, an’ they knew I meant what I said,
‘there’ll be two marks agin your names; and one’ll tell whether you’re
a friend or a foe. The time has come. You are dismissed.’”

“Was every man a friend?” asked Billy, leaning forward eagerly.

“William,” answered Thomas Murphy, leaning forward, and punctuating his
words with his stiff forefinger, “every one of ’em, William. Every one,
to a man.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Billy. “You were a true friend, Mr. Murphy.”

“William,” said Thomas Murphy, sitting erect in his chair, “that’s what
the super said--his very words: ‘Thomas Murphy, you’re a true friend.’”

Then Billy gave Thomas Murphy some ice-cream and cakes, and some ginger
ale.

The last thing that Thomas Murphy said as he went out the garden gate
was:

“William, when are you a-comin’ back to the office? All the men want to
see you, William.”

Billy didn’t answer. He climbed up the steps, and then up the stairs.

When he reached his room he went to the chair by the broad window where
he could look at the mountains. He had been wondering himself when he
was going back to the office. Every time that he had tried to ask Mr.
Prescott, something had seemed to stop him. Why didn’t Mr. Prescott
talk about it? When was he going home?

That night as Billy lay on the seat in the broad window, he told Mr.
Prescott about Tom’s speech to the men.

Then Mr. Prescott said:

“I think that you and Tom Murphy did something for me, just then, that
nobody else could have done. Things were going wrong, and I couldn’t
stop them.”

Billy said quickly, “I didn’t do anything.”

“You were in the hospital,” said Mr. Prescott, “and the men knew why.”

They talked on till the room grew dark. Finally Billy said:

“Mr. Murphy asked me when I am going back to the office.”

For a minute Mr. Prescott didn’t say anything. Then he said slowly:

“Billy, while you’ve been with me, have you ever thought that you would
like to stay here all the time?”

Billy waited a moment.

“No, Mr. Prescott,” he said slowly.

Mr. Prescott moved uneasily in his chair, but he didn’t say anything.

After a little while Billy said:

“This is too nice a place for a boy that works.”

“See here, Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott, sharply, “we’ll have
none of that! That sounds like William Wallace. He was telling you to
let me down easy, was he?

“You may just as well understand, both of you,” he went on, firing his
words at Billy in the dark, “you may as well understand, once for all,
that you can’t tell, simply by looking at the house a man lives in, how
hard that man works.

“Sometimes a man works so hard that he doesn’t know what sort of house
he _does_ live in.

“That doesn’t mean,” he said calming down a little, “that I don’t care
about this house, for I do. It helps a man to live the right sort of
life.”

Then he said, still more quietly:

“There’s another thing I want you to understand. It’s Billy himself
that I want. I’m not talking to William Wallace. He is very well able
to take care of himself. If I’m not talking to Billy, I’ll not talk.
Which is it?” he demanded.

“It’s Billy,” said Billy, very humbly.

“Then give me a true answer, Billy Bradford,” he said gently. “It
has been very pleasant to have you here, Billy,” he went on, almost
persuadingly. “When you go I shall be all alone.”

Billy waited. He must, in honor, tell the truth.

Then his man-side came to help him, and he said slowly:

“Next to Uncle John, I like you better than anybody.”

He waited another moment before he finished:

“But my father gave me to my Uncle John.”

Mr. Prescott sat still so long that Billy began to wonder whether he
was ever going to say anything more.

At last he said:

“You do belong to your Uncle John. He has the first right. But I have a
right of my own. You’ve come into my life, and you’re not going out of
it.”

Then Mr. Prescott sat silent so long that Billy wondered, again,
whether he ever would say anything more.

Just as Billy had decided that that was the end, Mr. Prescott began
slowly, in a sort of far-away tone, as though he hadn’t quite come back
from a place where he had been off to think:

“I’m going to be your brother, Billy Bradford.”

Then he added, in a tone that men like Mr. Prescott use only when they
mean things hard:

“Just as long as I live.”

Mr. Prescott didn’t know it, but he had touched a place in Billy’s
heart that nobody had ever touched before. Nobody except Billy knew
that he had such a place.

Billy waited a minute--a long minute, then he said slowly:

“I’ve wished and wished and wished that I had a big brother of my own.”

“Then,” said Mr. Prescott, “your wish has come true.”

He said that as though he was as glad as he could be that he had worked
that thing out right.

Then, getting up and going over to the nearest electric chain, he said
firmly, like the Mr. Prescott that Billy loved best:

“That big brother is right here. His name is Henry Marshall Prescott,
and he’s here, right here.”




[Illustration]




CHAPTER XIII

IRON HORSES


“You’ve been kept still so long, Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott at
breakfast the next Tuesday morning, “that it seems to me it would do
you good to move around a little. Think so yourself?”

“Seems that way to me,” answered Billy.

“Last night,” said Mr. Prescott, “I called up that yellow-haired doctor
of yours----”

“Dr. Crandon,” interrupted Billy, “is a friend of mine. His hair is
only light brown.”

“Well then, begging your pardon, Dr. Crandon says he thinks, now that
the weather is cooler, a motor trip would do you good.

“When I asked him whether he would like to go, he said that he would,
and that he could start by Thursday. With one on the front seat with
Joseph, there’s a seat to spare. I’ve been wondering----”

Billy’s eyes were so full of wishing that Mr. Prescott asked:

“Who is it, Billy?”

“Of course--I don’t suppose--I should like----” said Billy floundering
around, because he wasn’t quite sure how Mr. Prescott would feel about
inviting Uncle John.

“You needn’t,” said Mr. Prescott, “go through the formality of telling
me. There’s only one person in the world on your mind, Billy Bradford,
when your eyes look like that.

“He’s the one I want myself, so you needn’t think you’ve got ahead of
me there. The only question is, how shall we manage it? Shall we ask
him, or shall we run away with him?”

“Run away with him,” said Billy, half in surprise and half in assent.

“Suppose,” said Mr. Prescott, “that you go out into the garden this
morning, and stay there till you’ve figured that out.”

Then, just as though he were giving an order to one of his men, he
added, as he rose from the table:

“You may report to me at noon.”

Before the morning was over, Billy had decided that figuring things
out was very much harder than going on errands that other people had
planned.

He sat in the summer house till he was tired. Then he walked around all
the paths. But settle it he would, for Uncle John must never, never
lose a chance like that.

Settle it he did, and made his report:

“We could tell him, the night before, that there was something special
that I wanted to ask him, and that he could come here at nine o’clock
and take his time about getting back to work----”

“That,” interrupted Mr. Prescott, “will hit the case exactly. I’ll see
that he takes his time about getting back.”

“And,” continued Billy, “I could go to see Aunt Mary this afternoon and
tell her about it, and get my bank book----”

“Your what?” demanded Mr. Prescott.

“My bank book. You see Uncle John’s blue serge suit will be all right,
but he’ll need a cap. Aunt Mary has to plan for things like that, so I
want my bank book.”

“I’ve been thinking about motor clothes,” said Mr. Prescott. “I’ll look
in that closet at the office. There are some extra things there. I can
put some things of mine in the trunk. I wouldn’t bother, just now, to
draw any money. Know anything about the size of his hat?”

“Yes,” answered Billy, “it’s only a size smaller than yours. You
remember that I looked in yours one day.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Prescott, “I believe that looking at the size of hats
is one of your fads.”

“My Uncle John,” said Billy, “isn’t so very tall, but he has quite a
large head.”

Billy tried to say it offhand, but his pride showed, all the way
through.

“Your Uncle John,” said Mr. Prescott, paying very close attention to
the chop that he was eating, “is both an unusual man, and an unusually
good-looking man.”

Perhaps there were two people at that table who could make offhand
remarks!

“The next thing,” said Mr. Prescott, leaning back in his chair, “is
what is to become of your Aunt Mary while your Uncle John is taking his
time to return.”

“I wisht she could go up in the country,” said Billy.

“How would it do for you to find out this afternoon where she would
like to go? Then we could talk it over to-night.”

So, for the first time since his accident, Billy went back home. It
seemed to him that the auto had never run so slowly.

Aunt Mary was very much surprised. She asked him, right off, whether he
had come home to stay.

“Not yet,” answered Billy.

After he had been into all the rooms, Billy said:

“Aunt Mary, won’t you come out to sit on the steps? I want to talk to
you.”

How good it did seem to be sitting on those steps!

They talked and talked, and Aunt Mary grew very much excited over the
trip.

“It’ll do him a world of good!” she said. “You don’t know how we’ve
both worried about you, Billy.”

While she was talking, Billy was watching her; he was trying to decide
where her smile left off.

When she said she could manage the part about Uncle John, Billy said:

“Are you sure your face won’t give it away?”

“Do I look as glad as that?” she asked, putting her hand up to her
face. “No,” she went on, “he’ll think it’s because you have been home.”

Billy looked around. The potatoes by the fence had been dug, and Uncle
John had smoothed the ground all down again. He wouldn’t have been John
Bradford if he hadn’t done that.

“Home’s the best place, isn’t it, Aunt Mary?” said Billy, with a little
sigh of happiness.

Then he remembered that he must manage Aunt Mary, too. He must try to
get around it so that she wouldn’t suspect anything. When he thought of
the right way, it seemed very simple.

“Aunt Mary,” he said, “if you had an automobile, where do you think you
would go first?”

That surely ought to throw her off the track, for she could never
expect to have an automobile.

It surely did throw her off the track.

“Billy,” she said, “that’s a queer thing to ask me.”

Then she said soberly:

“Don’t you know, Billy, there’s only one place in the world where I
should want to go first?”

“Up in the country,” said Billy, growing sober, too, “where--where you
got me?”

Aunt Mary simply bowed her head.

Wednesday afternoon Mr. Prescott dictated ever so many letters to Miss
King. The last was one to Mrs. John Bradford in which Mr. Prescott
begged that Mrs. Bradford would be so kind as to make use of the
enclosed, so that he might be relieved from concern about her while Mr.
Bradford was away with him.

Then Mr. Prescott took from his pocket a ticket that had on it “to” and
“return.” After the “to” came a name, not very long, on the ticket, but
one that, when it reached Aunt Mary’s eyes, would read, The Place of
Places.

“Here,” said Mr. Prescott, “is the enclosure. Please write that letter
first, Miss King. That must be posted to-night.”

That was Wednesday night. Then Mr. Prescott went home and told Billy
that he must go to bed as soon as he had had his supper, so that he
would be ready to start in the morning.

Thursday morning came. So did Joseph with the car.

If ever a man looked pleased with himself, it was Mr. Henry Marshall
Prescott when he gave his motor coat a final pull with both hands, and
settled himself on the seat behind Joseph, with Billy between him and
his Uncle John.

They certainly did look well.

The young doctor knew all about automobile “togs,” as he called them.
So, of course, he was strictly up to date.

There were some other up-to-date “togs” in that car. In point of fact,
there were a good many. They had been sent up to the office the day
before. Some of them were Billy’s. Being only a boy, he hadn’t thought
of having any special clothes, but he had on everything that Mr.
Prescott had been able to find “for a boy of thirteen.”

Some of them were Uncle John’s. Even Dr. Crandon’s weren’t any nearer
up to calendar time than were those which Mr. Prescott had provided for
John Bradford.

When he had helped John Bradford on with the coat, Mr. Prescott had
looked straight at Billy with a say-anything-if-you-dare expression.

He knew, just as well as Billy did, that, though he had looked there,
those things never came out of the closet at the mill.

When Uncle John put on goggles, Billy’s smile changed into a broad grin.

That didn’t disturb John Bradford. When he did a thing, he liked to do
it all.

That morning, when Billy had told him about the trip and about Aunt
Mary, he had taken time enough to smile a long, happy smile. Then he
had said:

“Enjoy good things as they come along, and be thankful.”

He had worked that motto hard for a great many years, and he was
ready to use it again. So he gave himself up to enjoying and to being
thankful.

The car was a six cylinder--a big six, and Joseph was a steady driver.

They had gone about twenty miles when Dr. Crandon said:

“We are going along as smooth as glass.”

“I,” said John Bradford, “am enjoying the way that we go up-hill. I
never could bear to see a horse straining every muscle to pull me
up-hill.”

“I think,” said Mr. Prescott, “that horses ought to be thankful to the
men that make automobiles or any sort of iron horse.”

Billy looked up at him.

“Iron horses,” he said. “I never thought of it that way before. There
doesn’t seem to be any end to iron.”

“How about steel, young chap?” asked Dr. Crandon, from the front seat.

“That’s iron,” said Billy, “but I don’t know much about it except that
it makes tools and swords.”

“And knives,” said Dr. Crandon, way down in his throat.

“Oh!” said Billy.

But nobody knew whether he said it to Dr. Crandon, or whether it was
because the car came to a sudden stop.

“Puncture, sir,” said Joseph.

However Mr. Prescott may have felt, and he probably did have some
feelings, he acted as though he didn’t mind in the least.

“That grove looks inviting,” he said. “Suppose we have some lunch.”

Then he unstrapped the lunch basket and, in a few minutes, they were
all sitting under the trees enjoying sandwiches and ginger ale.

“Seems rather pleasant,” said Mr. Prescott, “to have a change. Dr.
Crandon, what were you saying about knives?”

“Let me see,” said Dr. Crandon; “nothing, I think, except that they are
made of steel. I’m somewhat interested in the subject.”

“Do you,” asked Billy, “know where jack-knives first came from?”

“Yes, young chap, I do. I know where some of the best come from now.
I’ve been to Sheffield.”

“Where’s that?” asked Billy.

“England. You’ll often find the name on knives. I bought a steel ink
eraser the other day which the clerk told me was ‘genuine Sheffield.’

“About the time that Queen Elizabeth died, Sheffield was famous for
something else that you could never, never guess.”

“What?” asked Billy.

“Jew’s harps,” answered Dr. Crandon.

“Now, Billy,” said Mr. Prescott, “you can add the marks on steel to the
sizes of hats.”

“I will,” said Billy.

“Look for Birmingham,” said Uncle John. “That’s famous for tools.”

“And Toledo is the place for scissors,” added Mr. Prescott.

“Speaking of marks,” said Dr. Crandon, “I have a sword marked with a
crown.”

“A genuine Ferrara!” exclaimed Mr. Prescott. “I’m not going to covet my
neighbor’s goods, but if you should ever come across another, please
remember that I have only a Damascus and a Toledo.”

“Only!” exclaimed Dr. Crandon. “Those ought to be enough to satisfy any
man. No special virtue in your not coveting my Ferrara.

“The point and the hilt of mine will come together, just the same,” he
added with boyish pride.

“Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott, “you’ve been keeping pretty still.
What’s in your mind?”

“Just then,” answered John Bradford, “I was thinking about something
that my grandfather told me about his father.”

“As I figure it,” interrupted Mr. Prescott, “he would be Billy’s
great-great-great-grandfather.”

“Yes,” replied John Bradford.

Billy, glancing at Mr. Prescott, smiled a satisfied sort of smile.

“He,” said John Bradford, “came from Massachusetts. He said that they
used to fish up iron out of ponds with tongs such as oyster dredgers
use.”

“Honest and true!” broke in Billy.

“Fact, Billy. Don’t interrupt,” said Mr. Prescott, shaking his head at
Billy.

“He said,” continued John Bradford, “that, many a time, he had fished
up half a ton a day.”

“That bog ore,” said Dr. Crandon, “is very interesting. It is deposited
by infusoria--_gaillonella ferruginea_,” he added, trying to speak very
professionally, though the corners of his mouth were twitching with fun.

Seeing that Billy was regarding him rather critically, he went on:

“You see, young chap, that there is iron almost everywhere; and it is
very soluble in water, so it naturally goes into ponds; and those tiny
animals in some way make it over into bog ore.

“The senior doctor was talking with me, the other day, about giving you
some iron.”

“What for?” asked Billy abruptly.

“It’s iron in your blood that makes your cheeks red; iron in red
apples; iron----”

“Pardon me, doctor,” interrupted Mr. Prescott, “the tire is on.”

“By the way, Bradford, I believe you’ve been told to take your time
about returning?”

“So I understand,” answered John Bradford, smiling as he spoke.

“Then, if you don’t mind, Bradford, we’ll motor on to a place where
these young fellows,” he said, waving his hand toward the doctor and
Billy, “may be able to learn a thing or two more on the subject of
iron.”

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XIV

THE GIANTS


They stood on the dock of a river where great ships leave
their burden of iron ore.

“There she comes!” exclaimed Mr. Prescott, pointing to a freighter that
was slowly drawing near.

“No giants in sight yet,” said Billy.

“It’s your eyes that are not seeing,” returned Mr. Prescott. “That boat
herself is a giantess. Watch.”

Hardly had the great boat been made fast to her moorings before, in
some mysterious way, the hold of the ship opened wide from stem to
stern.

Then somebody touched a lever somewhere, and over the hold swung a row
of buckets that, opening like two hands, grabbed into the ore, and
seizing tons of it, swung back to the dock. A touch of another lever
unloaded it into huge storage bins.

“Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott, “weren’t those the hands of a
giant?”

“Sure, sir,” answered Billy, who stood staring in wonder.

“That ore,” said Mr. Prescott, “came from a surface mine up in the pine
woods of Lake Superior, a thousand miles away.

“Perhaps, gentlemen, you may like to know that the American supremacy
in iron is largely due to those open pit mines up in Minnesota.

“Much of the ore in that region is so near the surface that a steam
shovel can easily strip off the ‘overburden’ of the soil and the roots
of pine trees.

“When that was done, giant hands seized that ore, lifted it up, and
loaded it into bins, high up on the bluffs.

“Then a man, not a giant, touched a treadle, and another kind of giant,
named ‘gravity,’ made the ore run from the bottom of the car into a bin.

“Chutes from the ore bin ran into the hold of the steamer, and almost
before she had been tied to the dock she was ready to come down here.

“Giants or not, Billy Bradford?”

“Iron giants,” answered Billy.

“Rather different, Mr. Bradford,” said Dr. Crandon, “from fishing ore
with tongs.”

“We’ve moved along a great way since that time,” said John Bradford,
“and most of our progress has been due to iron.”

“Giants don’t do all the work even now,” said Mr. Prescott. “They make
short work of iron mountains and surface deposits, but most of them
are too large to work underground; though we mustn’t forget that Giant
Electricity works down there with the men.

“Giant Gravity helps too, for, when they work below the deposit, he
caves the ore down. Of course some ores are so hard that they can’t be
caved, so there is still some mining for the men to do.”

“Was there,” asked Billy, trying to speak in a sort of offhand way, “an
iron mountain where this iron came from?”

“There are some,” answered Mr. Prescott, “up in that region.”

Billy had been paying very close attention to what Mr. Prescott had
been saying. There was something that he wanted especially to find out.
He felt very sure, now, that he was hearing about an iron mountain that
he had heard about once before.

He felt very sure, but he wouldn’t ask any more questions, because that
was the secret that he had with Thomas Murphy.

The others started for the car. But Billy stood a moment longer to look
at the giant hands that, having finished their work, were hanging idly
in the air. The hold of the ship, emptied of its burden, was already
beginning to close.

“Beginning to believe in giants, aren’t you?” said Mr. Prescott, as
Billy stepped into the car.

“The next giant will be a hungry fellow, and he is very, very tall; so
he eats a great deal.”

“An iron-eater, is he?” queried Dr. Crandon.

“We ourselves will have something to eat before we visit him,” said Mr.
Prescott, ordering Joseph to drive back to the hotel.

“Mr. Prescott,” said Dr. Crandon, as they sat at table, “is iron ever
found in a pure state, like gold, for instance?”

“It is practically never found in a pure state,” answered Mr. Prescott,
“except the meteoric iron, ‘the stone of heaven.’”

Billy looked at him questioningly.

“That was rather technical, wasn’t it, Billy? You see, I was talking to
a technical man. Just between you and me, meteoric iron comes down from
the sky, from what we call shooting stars. Sometimes large pieces are
found. I suppose that much of it falls into the sea. It is the purest
iron that has ever been found.”

“What about magnetic iron?” asked Dr. Crandon. “Where does that come
from?”

“At the present time,” answered Mr. Prescott, “most of it comes from
Sweden and Norway. It makes the best kind of steel.

“Ages ago, the first was found in Magnesia,” said Mr. Prescott casting
a quick glance around the table.

“The people there found certain hard, black stones which would attract
to themselves bits of iron and steel. So they named them magnets,
from Magnesia, the place where the stones were found,” finished Mr.
Prescott, with another look around the table.

“It’s of no use, Prescott,” said Dr. Crandon, “you needn’t look at us.
We don’t any of us know even where to look for Magnesia. Don’t suppose
we could find it even if we had a map.”

“I presume you remember, Crandon,” said Mr. Prescott, “the place that
boasted that ancient wonder of the world, the Temple of Diana.”

“Ephesus!” said Dr. Crandon, quickly. “I do happen to know that Ephesus
is in Asia Minor.”

“Then,” said Mr. Prescott, still keeping his face very grave, “I
should strongly advise your finding Ephesus first. That’s in the near
neighborhood of Magnesia.”

“Thank you,” said Dr. Crandon gravely. “Though I did not know where
magnetic iron came from, I do happen to know that it is sometimes
called ‘lode-stone.’

“And I know, too, that Sir Isaac Newton--he’s the one, Billy, who ran
down Giant Gravity--had a ring set with a lode-stone that could lift
two hundred and fifty times its own weight.”

“And I know,” said Mr. Prescott, “that I am very grateful to Dr.
Crandon for telling me about the new electro-magnet that I now have at
the mill. I feel very much easier, now, about my workmen’s eyes.”

“Do you mean,” asked Billy, “that thing that you brought home that I
thought was a new desk telephone?”

“It does resemble a telephone,” said Dr. Crandon, “only it has a tip
instead of a mouthpiece. It’s a great thing for taking bits of steel
out of eyes.”

“Isn’t there such a thing,” asked John Bradford, “as a magnetic
separator?”

“Glad to hear from you once more, Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott, with a
smile. “It has been some time since you have said anything.”

“I have been having too good a time,” said John Bradford, “to want to
talk. I should like, now, to have you tell us about the separator.”

“It is an electro-magnetic drum. When the finely crushed ore is poured
on it in a stream, the drum attracts the iron, while the earthy matter,
which is non-magnetic, falls off by the action of gravity. The iron is
carried on by the drum, until a brush arrangement sweeps it off into a
truck.

“That is a case, Billy, where Giant Gravity and Giant Electro-magnet
fight over the ore, and each gets away with a part of it.

“Perhaps I ought to explain to you that, when a bar of soft iron is put
inside an insulated coil of copper wire and a current of electricity is
passed through it, it becomes a powerful magnet. That is what we mean
by an electro-magnet. The advantage of that is that it ceases to be a
magnet when the current ceases, so it can be controlled. You will see
some before I am through showing you giants.

“There is also an electric cleaner that collects the iron that is left
in the corners of cars. Those devices save iron. Strange as it may
seem, however, not all iron will respond to the magnetic cleaners.”

“Is there,” asked Dr. Crandon, “any danger that the iron in the world
will be exhausted?”

“I hardly think so,” answered Mr. Prescott. “The available ores, in the
single range that we were talking about this morning, run up into the
trillions of metric tons.”

“I read something the other day,” said John Bradford, “about some iron
that had been found in Sweden, up beyond the arctic circle.”

“That,” said Mr. Prescott, “is one of the most extensive deposits in
the world. The countries of the western part of Europe draw upon that
supply.

“It is very likely that we haven’t found all the iron yet, and even
more likely that we shall find a way to make use of the poorer ores.

“By the way, Billy, there is one kind of iron called ‘iron pyrites.’ It
looks so much like gold that it has deceived many a poor fellow into
thinking that he had found gold. It well deserves the name ‘fool’s
gold.’ It doesn’t even make good iron. I’ll show you some when we go
home. Now we’ll go to see the iron-eater.”

Ten minutes later Billy exclaimed:

“He’s tall!”

“Not quite a hundred feet,” said Mr. Prescott.

“He’s black!” said Dr. Crandon.

“He roars!” added John Bradford.

“And,” said Mr. Prescott, “even if he could be moved, he’s rather too
valuable for a circus manager to buy, for he cost a million dollars. I
really think he’s the most fearful thing ever made by man. The Germans,
though, did a great thing for iron when they evolved the blast furnace.”

“Makes our cupola,” said John Bradford, as they stopped before the tall
iron stack, “look very small.”

“Ours,” said Mr. Prescott, “is only a dwarf, but he does something like
the same work; only here they put in iron ore instead of pig iron.
Blast furnaces make pig iron.”

[Illustration: “THE MOST FEARFUL THING EVER MADE”]

“What diet,” asked Dr. Crandon, “do they give this giant?”

“You’re bound to think professionally, aren’t you, Crandon? He’s
restricted to coke, iron ore, and limestone, but they feed him very
often. They see, too, that he has plenty of hot air to breathe.

“The old problem used to be how to get heat enough to melt the ore.
That was solved by a Scotchman, who originated the use of the hot blast.

“The gas produced by the furnace used to be wasted. Now they utilize
it in the hot-blast stoves. That accounts for some of the huge pipes
attached to the furnace. Come this way, and I’ll show you a stove.

“Here it is, almost as tall as the furnace itself. This giant, also, is
encased in an armor of iron plates. If we could look inside, we should
see that it is almost filled with open brick work that resembles a
honeycomb.

“They send hot gas over the brick work till the stove is hot, then they
shut off the gas and start the engine that blows in cold air. That,
heated by the bricks, is forced into the furnace.

“One of those great pipes up there is where they draw off the slag. It
is so much lighter than the iron that it rises to the top, like cream
on milk.

“Down here they draw off the iron. Sometimes they keep it hot for the
next process; sometimes it is made into pig iron.”

“What,” asked Dr. Crandon, “becomes of the slag?”

“That depends somewhat on the chemical composition of the slag. Some
kinds are broken up to be used as foundation for roads; others are
granulated by being run into water, and so made into cement. Over in
Germany, where the ores are rich in phosphorus, they grind up the
linings of the furnace to make phosphatic fertilizers for the farmers.”

“Then,” said Dr. Crandon, “the making of iron involves the use of
chemistry, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does,” answered Mr. Prescott; “from the chemical
composition of ores to the finished product. We are learning a great
deal just now from the chemists about steel alloys.

“I didn’t tell you that from the gas they sometimes save ammonia, tar,
and oils, before it is fed to the hot-blast stoves.”

“By-products,” said Dr. Crandon, “seem to be a feature of modern
industry.”

“It is high time,” said Mr. Prescott, “that waste should receive
attention.”

“Before we leave this giant I must tell you that he already has a
dangerous rival--listen, Billy, for it’s almost a David and Goliath
story--in a little electric smelter. Some of them can be moved about
like a portable sawmill.

“Up in Sweden, where the ores are among the purest in the world, they
use electric smelters and make steel direct from the ore.”

“Any more giants?” asked Billy.

“You’ll think so,” answered Mr. Prescott, “before I am through with
them; but we’ve seen enough for to-day. Next time I’ll show you giants
that have done something more than to make iron, for they have really
reduced the size of the world.”

“Whew!” exclaimed Dr. Crandon.

“Before that,” said Mr. Prescott, “I am going to introduce you to some
pygmies.”

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XV

THE PYGMIES


“Shall we need glasses, Prescott, in order to see your
pygmies?” asked Dr. Crandon, the next morning, while they were waiting
for the car.

“I will agree to furnish all the glasses needed,” answered Mr. Prescott.

Much as Billy wanted to know what Mr. Prescott was going to show them,
he had made up his mind to trust to his eyes to find out.

John Bradford was learning so many things that he had long wanted to
know that he was simply enjoying things as they came along, and being
thankful.

“To the office of the steel works, Joseph,” said Mr. Prescott.

On past the great yard of the blast furnace they went, then along by
some high brick walls until they stopped in front of a two-story cement
building.

Then they followed Mr. Prescott till he stopped at the head of the
stairs, and knocked at a door.

“Come in,” shouted somebody in a cordial voice.

“Hullo, Harry, old fellow!” said the owner of the voice, still more
cordially, as he came forward with outstretched hand.

“This,” said Mr. Prescott, “is my classmate, Mr. Farnsworth, who is at
the head of the laboratory.”

After he had introduced John Bradford and Dr. Crandon, he added, “And
this is Billy Bradford.”

Then he said, “I’ve brought these friends of mine to see your show.
We’ve been to see some of the giants in the iron industry. Now I want
them to have a look at your pygmies.”

“Pygmies they shall see,” said Mr. Farnsworth, with an appreciative
smile. “Hardly a technical term, but a good way, Harry, to get hold of
the facts. Pygmies they shall be.

“Sit down, all of you,” he said, pointing to chairs by his low, broad
table.

Pushing back the sliding door of a case behind the table, he took out a
tray containing small round pieces of iron and steel.

“Shall I tell you about these specimens, or will you ask me?”

“Just give us a general idea, Jack,” answered Mr. Prescott; “we might
ask the wrong questions.”

“Then, Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Farnsworth, smiling at Billy, “I’ll
explain to you, and the others may listen.

“You see we chemists analyze the ores before they are smelted; so we
know something about what kind of pig iron we shall have. But when we
want to know what kind of finished iron or steel we have from a given
process, we can’t tell much by analyzing it, so we have to depend on
our microscopes.

“Metals crystallize, if they have just the right conditions. Each metal
has its own form; so, if you could find a single crystal, you would
recognize it by its form.

“But when melted iron grows solid, the crystals are crowded so close
together that, when it is prepared for the microscope, and polished
like this, the surface looks as if it were made up of ‘crystal grains.’

“Sometimes crystallization takes place in steel if it is subjected to
long repeated jar. Many accidents in engines are due to that.”

As he took the cover off his microscope, Mr. Farnsworth said:

“I suppose, Harry, that your ‘pygmies’ are the elements that are found
in the various kinds of iron?”

“The same,” answered Mr. Prescott.

“Then I shall tell Billy Bradford that some of the pygmies are enemies
and others are friends; some need to be driven away, and others should
be invited to come in.

“The most numerous enemies are the Carbon pygmies. The blast furnace
drives most of them off, but they have to be fought in the pig iron,
too.

“Sulphur pygmies are about the worst of all, because they make the iron
brittle. They are practically the hardest to drive away.

“Phosphorus pygmies haven’t a good reputation, but they are in much
better standing than the Sulphur enemies.

“Now, if you’ll look in here--this is the purest and the softest
Swedish bar iron--you’ll see where the edges of the crystals come
together. These are friendly Ferrite pygmies, crowding close together.
_Ferrum_ is the Latin name for iron; you must remember that.”

“If I didn’t know,” said John Bradford, when he took his turn, “I
should think I was looking at some sort of wood with a very fine grain.”

“This,” said Mr. Farnsworth, changing the specimen, “has black and
white streaks in it; that means that the iron has begun to be steel.
When it has light patches like these in it, we know that it has taken
up more carbon, and has grown harder.

“So it goes,” he said, showing one after another of the specimens. “You
can see for yourself that, if friendly pygmies stand in line, taking
hold of hands, that would make a good kind of iron to draw out into a
wire. If enemies stand around in groups, they make the iron easy to
break.

“When we want steel for chisels, for example, we invite Tungsten to
come in; when we want certain parts for automobiles we call in some
Vanadium pygmies.”

“So,” said Mr. Prescott, “while we need the giants to make the pig
iron, the real value of the iron and steel depends on the pygmies.”

“That’s about the size of it,” said Mr. Farnsworth.

“Anything the trouble with you, young chap?” asked Dr. Crandon. “You
haven’t spoken for ten minutes. Feel bad anywhere?”

“No,” answered Billy. “I was just wishing I could know about all those
things.”

“I’m glad it’s nothing worse than that,” said Dr. Crandon.

“Now,” said Mr. Prescott, “we’ll start for some more giants. Coming,
Farnsworth?”

“Sorry, not to-day. Call again!”

“The steel mill comes next on my program,” said Mr. Prescott, when they
went out. “I want you to see a Bessemer converter, an open hearth, and
some crucibles, because that practically covers the different methods
of making iron and steel.

“Here is the Bessemer converter. You see it is an iron cylinder made
of wrought iron plates, and it tapers off at the top in a conical end.
See. It is swinging down to be filled almost as easily as you can turn
your hand over. In a moment it will stand up again, twenty-five feet
tall.

“Bessemer got hold of the idea that air could be used instead of fuel.
They say he risked his life in his experiments. He worked a long time,
but he won, and the Bessemer converters started the boom in steel.

“See it come up again, with fifteen tons of hot pig iron in it. Down in
the bottom of the converter is a blast chest where the air is forced in
under pressure, after it has been blown into a tank by blowing engines.”

“O-o-oh!” exclaimed Billy, as the top of the converter seemed to burst
into flame, and a shower of sparks came down.

“That,” said Dr. Crandon, “is surely a fearful sort of thing!”

Then the flame began to drop slowly, and they saw that the converter
itself was safe.

“This process burns out all the carbon. Bessemer was trying to make
wrought iron when he started out. Now they put back the right amount of
carbon, and make the iron into steel.

“It’s a chemical process. When the air strikes the hot metals the
oxygen unites with them, and they burst into flame. The whole process
takes between fifteen and twenty minutes.”

“I am very sure,” said Dr. Crandon, “that I shouldn’t like to work
here.”

“When we get to the open hearth process, which is the rival of the
Bessemer,” said Mr. Prescott, “I expect that none of you will want to
work there.”

“For my part,” said John Bradford, slowly, “I prefer Prescott mill.”

“So do I,” said Billy.

“Which reminds me,” said Mr. Prescott, “to tell you that I have been
looking at some machines to help in the foundry. They will help about
lifting and ramming; but they won’t do away with the work of men.

“Here we are, gentlemen, before a Siemens-Martin open hearth. This
is a continuous process. It was evolved by Sir William Siemens, a
German-English engineer, and his brother. Then a man named Martin, a
Frenchman, I understand, found a way to mix the iron and steel that are
put on the hearth, so it bears both the names.

“We’ll just look in. It is a large, shallow basin, made of bricks,
partly filled with iron. Both hot air and gas are burned on top of the
iron. The process takes seven or eight hours; but it produces larger
quantities of steel than the Bessemer converters can do.

“Then, too, it furnishes all kinds of iron and steel, for they sample
it as it burns, and draw off the steel at any percentage of carbon that
they want.

“Cast iron has a great deal of carbon in it; steel has much less; and
wrought iron has almost none.

“Now, we’ll go over to the crucible furnace.”

They walked slowly across the yard.

“There are no giants here,” said Mr. Prescott, “with the exception
of the furnaces in which they set the crucibles; and they are small,
compared with the furnaces that we have seen.”

They found themselves in a long room lined with shelves of clay
crucibles, about eighteen inches in height. On the sides of the room,
under the shelves, were rows of small furnaces, each large enough for
two crucibles.

“The crucible process,” said Mr. Prescott, “gives us our finest steels.
It is a simple melting together of iron and charcoal. The carbon of the
charcoal passes into the iron. When the crucibles are filled, they are
set in the furnace, and left for several days.

“They make a special kind of crucible steel over in Sheffield.”

While he was saying that, Mr. Prescott glanced at Billy, but Billy was
looking at the furnace, and did not hear what Mr. Prescott said.

Mr. Prescott looked at him hard, as he said:

“The home of the crucible is Sheffield.”

“Sheffield,” said Billy, turning, “is where they make good jack-knives.”

“Want to see a genuine Sheffield?” asked Mr. Prescott, putting his hand
into his pocket.

That time he didn’t have to attract Billy’s attention, for Billy stood
waiting.

“See,” said Mr. Prescott, pulling out a chain that had a knife on it,
and opening the blades. “See, it has Sheffield on both blades.”

Billy’s eyes saw the “Sheffield.” Then they saw something else, for on
the side of the knife was a little silver plate, and on it--he had to
look twice--was “Billy Bradford.”

“That’s a good knife,” said Billy.

The three men smiled, each his very best smile.

“Thank you, Mr. Prescott,” said Billy as he took the knife. Then he
smiled, too.

“Now for the steel mill, and the last of our giants.”

“Is the mill deserted?” asked Dr. Crandon, as they went in.

“It’s much easier,” said Mr. Prescott, “to find the giants in a steel
mill than it is to find the men. If you look around you’ll find a few,
but they’ll be in most unexpected places.”

“I see a man,” exclaimed Billy, “up in a cage!”

“He’s controlling that crane,” said Mr. Prescott. “See it carry that
ingot of red-hot iron!”

“This,” said Dr. Crandon, “passes belief. There’s a boy over there, in
a reclining chair, who is opening a furnace down on this side.”

“Look at that!” exclaimed John Bradford, pointing to a crane like a
huge thumb and forefinger, which had picked up a red-hot ingot, tons in
weight, and was dropping it on a waiting car.

“Let’s follow it,” said Mr. Prescott, pleased to see John Bradford so
excited.

They followed it to a room filled with clanking rolls.

Another crane swung the red-hot iron into the jaws of rollers.

On went the fiery bolt, sometimes up on one roller, then down on
another, till at last they found that it had come out a finished rail.

Then a huge, round steel magnet, lowered by a man in a derrick house,
picked up half a dozen rails; another lever sent the crane down the
overhead tracks; and the rails were dropped in order on waiting cars.

“It used,” said Mr. Prescott, “to take a dozen men to load a single
rail.

“Giants or not, Billy Bradford?”

“Giants for sure,” replied Billy.

“Fire-eaters!” exclaimed Dr. Crandon. “Let’s go!”

“I’m ready,” said Mr. Prescott. “I’m glad that the work is so much
easier for the men, but I must confess that I don’t care to watch
red-hot iron shooting, almost flying around.”

“I’m ready to go,” said Billy.

“Joseph,” said Mr. Prescott, a few minutes later, “drive till you find
a country road.”

That evening, as they sat together on the hotel veranda, Mr. Prescott
said:

“I’ve been thinking,” then he stopped a moment to see whether Billy was
listening, “how much iron has done to make the world smaller.”

Then, seeing that Billy’s eyes were opening wider and wider, he said:

“The world is so much smaller than it used to be that I sometimes
wonder how much smaller it may grow.”

“Isn’t it just as far around the world as it always was?” asked Billy,
looking first at Mr. Prescott, then at his Uncle John, and then back at
Mr. Prescott.

“It’s of no use, Billy,” said Dr. Crandon, “to expect this man to tell
us anything straight out. He’s trying to train our minds. If we’re
going around with him, we shall have to submit to indirect methods of
obtaining information.”

“If you’ll excuse me, Crandon,” said Mr. Prescott, “I’m not sure that
Billy won’t learn as fast by my ‘indirect methods’ as he will by the
kind of words that you are using.”

“Even, I think,” said Dr. Crandon.

Then the three men smiled, each in his own way.

Billy didn’t smile. All his best heroes seemed to be showing
“disagreeable spots” at the same time.

But Billy had only a minute of thinking that, for Dr. Crandon said, in
his most friendly tone:

“I think I know what he’s driving at, so I’ll lend you a hand. It would
take a long time to sail around the world, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure,” answered Billy, quite like himself.

“But, if we were to start in an automobile, and drive to a train that
would take us to San Francisco----”

“And then,” said Uncle John, “take a steamer across the ocean----”

“And,” finished Mr. Prescott, “get back home in less than forty days,
wouldn’t that make the world smaller than if we had to sail and sail
and sail?”

“Of course,” answered Billy. “Anybody can see that.”

“And, if you were to go alone, Billy,” continued Mr. Prescott, in his
very friendliest tone, “you could wire me or ‘phone me or cable me
almost anywhere along the route. Wouldn’t that make the world seem very
small?

“And what do all these things mean but iron--iron engines and iron
rails and iron wires and watches with steel springs and magnetic steel
needles in compasses that guide the great steamers through the paths of
the sea?”

“Sometimes,” said Billy, in a half-discouraged tone, “I think there’s
no end to knowing about iron.”

“That’s not very far from true, Billy,” said Mr. Prescott. “We could
sit here till to-morrow morning trying to mention things made of iron,
or by means of iron, and then we should be likely to forget many of
them.

“If it weren’t for iron and steel implements and tools, men would have
hard work to earn a living.

“Dr. Crandon, what does it seem to you that we should lose if we were
to lose iron?”

“I’ve been thinking about the arts--surgery, too. We need iron for
sculpture, for music, for printing books and papers. We need iron, I
should say, for art’s sake.”

“And you, Bradford?”

“I’ve been thinking about agriculture. I never realized, before this
trip, how we really depend on iron for our food. That phosphatic
fertilizer set me to thinking about plows, mills, and all sorts of
things.”

“I think,” said Mr. Prescott, “that the man was right who said that the
strength of nations depends on coal and iron far more than it does on
gold.

“Another man said practically the same when he said that iron has given
man liberty and industry: tools and implements of peace, as well as
weapons of war. When you think it out, that seems to cover it all.

“Now, Billy,” Mr. Prescott went on, “I know what you will say. You may
say it.”

“Without iron,” said Billy, smiling up at Mr. Prescott, “we should be
just ‘nothin’, nobody.’”

“My lecture course,” said Mr. Prescott, “is now finished.

“To-morrow, I am going to show you where they try to make--do
make--something greater than iron.”

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XVI

WHAT MR. PRESCOTT SAID


“At four o’clock, Joseph.”

Billy looked at Mr. Prescott wonderingly.

“Why four o’clock, questioner? Because, when I’m going to see a
place, I like to see it at its best. I like to see this place in the
afternoon, when the shadows have grown long.

“No; no more questions.”

At a quarter past four, Joseph stopped the car in front of a beautiful
wrought iron gate.

“That’s a beauty!” exclaimed Dr. Crandon. “It reminds me of some of the
old mediæval work that I saw in Italy. What’s this, anyway?”

Mr. Prescott shook his head.

“All right, Prescott,” said Dr. Crandon, “I’ll wait.”

“As for that gate,” said Mr. Prescott, “I may as well admit that I am a
bit proud of it. The men of my year put it there.

“As for the place, I think,” said Mr. Prescott slowly, “I think I might
safely say that it is where they make, or try to make, a certain kind
of castings.”

“Would it be fair, Prescott,” said Dr. Crandon with a smile, “for me to
say that you yourself are prone to think professionally?”

“Quite fair, I assure you,” answered Mr. Prescott, with a bow.

“I don’t see anybody making anything,” said Billy, in a disappointed
tone.

“In the summer they have to rest both their machinery and their
material,” said Mr. Prescott.

Then Billy knew that Mr. Prescott expected him to keep his eyes and his
ears open until he found out for himself where they were.

“Let’s walk,” said Mr. Prescott.

[Illustration: “HE’S STILL LOOKING AT THE GATE”]

They were at the first corner when Billy exclaimed:

“Where’s Uncle John?”

“There he is,” said Mr. Prescott, turning around. “He’s still looking
at that gate. Don’t blame him much,” he added.

Back Billy went.

John Bradford was so absorbed in studying the gate that Billy had to
call him the second time before he turned.

“Eh! Billy, my lad!” he said. “I should like to do a piece of work as
beautiful as that. That is true artist work.”

Something in his tone made Billy say quickly:

“You’re an artist yourself, Uncle John. Miss King said so.”

“I should really like,” said John Bradford again, “to do such a piece
of work as that.”

“When we get home,” said Billy, “why don’t you begin?”

“Eh! Billy, my lad!” said Uncle John, but this time he said it with a
smile.

“He was wishing,” said Billy when they overtook the others, “that he
could make an iron gate.”

“I’ll confess, here and now,” said Mr. Prescott, “that I myself have
had aspirations of that sort.”

“Is iron-work coming in again?” asked Dr. Crandon. “It seems to me
that, just lately, I have seen some very beautiful gates.”

“I think so,” answered Mr. Prescott. “There are a few men who seem
to have caught the spirit of the old smiths, and to have seen the
possibilities in wrought iron. The man who made that gate is one of
them. He has invented a liquid, too, to prevent the rusting of the iron.

“You see that a man who works in iron must be both an artist and a
smith--he must blow the forge and use the hammer. That gate in cast
iron would be almost ugly. In the Swedish wrought iron, it is truly
beautiful.

“The old fellows knew much more about the artistic side of iron than we
do. Look at the old French locks--even a French king prided himself on
his ability to make locks.

“There was a time when an apprentice to a locksmith had to make a
masterpiece lock before he could become a master. It usually took him
two years to do it, for he had to chase and chisel it from the solid.

“I’ll tell you, Bradford, something that Billy Bradford doesn’t know. I
have a workshop of my own at home in the lower part of the house.

“A long time ago I began an iron gate for the garden. When we go back,
Bradford, let’s finish it.”

Billy, looking at his Uncle John, smiled serenely.

Then Billy walked by Uncle John, while Mr. Prescott and Dr. Crandon
went slowly before them down the long avenue of elms.

Billy listened to the two men as they talked. He found out that they
had both been to college, and then somewhere else. He couldn’t quite
make out what Mr. Prescott’s other place was; but it was somewhere
specially to study iron.

This talk about college was all new to Billy. He liked the stories that
they told, one after another. He had never seen Mr. Prescott so happy.

“That,” he said, stopping before a large brick building that looked
very old, “is where I used to room. Second story front.

“Billy, look back.”

Billy, turning, saw the great yard, green everywhere, with long shadows
of trees and buildings resting on it in the low light of the afternoon.

“It’s like the city and the country put together,” he said. “It’s the
most beautiful place that I ever saw!”

“Prescott,” said Dr. Crandon, “were you ever on a football team?”

“He was captain,” broke in Billy. “He told me so!”

“He’s captain still,” said John Bradford, in his slow, even way.

They all looked at him a moment.

“Good, Bradford, good!” exclaimed Dr. Crandon. “That’s what he is! I’m
inclined to think that football is a good training place for a captain
of industry.”

“It’s all team work,” said John Bradford. “Some do one thing and some
another, but without a captain a team can’t win.”

There were times when Uncle John said things that Billy couldn’t
understand. He did just then. But Billy knew, by the look that came
into Mr. Prescott’s face, that he was very much pleased.

“It takes,” said Dr. Crandon, “two sets of men to make the world move
along: those who work with their heads, and those who work with their
hands. For my part, I believe that one set works about as hard as the
other.”

“I’m truly thankful, Crandon,” said Mr. Prescott, “that there’s
somebody in the world who realizes that.”

Then they all started down the avenue of elms. Mr. Prescott had slipped
his arm through John Bradford’s, and was talking to him earnestly.

Dr. Crandon and Billy loitered along behind.

“Mr. Prescott seems to be unusually fond of his ‘Alma Mater,’” said Dr.
Crandon.

“What,” asked Billy, “does ‘Alma Mater’ mean?”

“It’s a Latin name for a college,” answered Dr. Crandon. “I think that
‘cherishing mother’ is a pretty good way to translate it into English.

“A college looks after you, and tries to make a man of you, something
the way your mother does, you know.”

“All the mother I ever had,” said Billy, “was only a week.”

“Oh, young chap, I’m sorry,” said Dr. Crandon, throwing his arm across
Billy’s shoulder the way college boys sometimes do.

“I tell you what I’d do,” he added quickly; “I’d begin to think about
an ‘Alma Mater.’ You could work your way through, you know. I began
that way myself.

“Don’t you do it, though, on less than three meals a day--square ones,”
he added with professional zeal.

“I shall keep an eye on you, young chap. I surely shall!”

Then he remembered that he had some letters to post, and hurried off to
the nearest box.

Billy kept on walking toward Mr. Prescott and Uncle John, who were
coming slowly back under the beautiful trees.

After he had gone a little way, Billy waited, in the middle of the
walk, for them to come up.

Mr. Prescott still had his hand through Uncle John’s arm. How happy
Uncle John looked, and Mr. Prescott, too!

When they reached him, they stopped.

“I’ve found out,” said Billy. “This is where they make----”

“Try to make,” corrected Mr. Prescott.

“Men,” finished Billy.

Then Mr. Prescott put his hand on Billy’s shoulder, and, looking right
down into Billy’s eyes, said slowly:

“He’s your boy, Bradford, but he belongs to me, too.

“We’ll work together, and we’ll see whether between us we can help him
to come to be a man.”




 =The Stories in this Series are=:

  THE STORY OF COTTON
  THE STORY OF GOLD AND SILVER
  THE STORY OF LUMBER
  THE STORY OF WOOL
  THE STORY OF IRON
  THE STORY OF LEATHER
  THE STORY OF GLASS
  THE STORY OF SUGAR
  THE STORY OF SILK
  THE STORY OF PORCELAIN




Transcriber’s Notes:


  Minor errors and omissions in punctuation have been fixed.
  In the list of Illustrations “He’s still looking at that gate” was
    changed to “He’s still looking at the gate”
  Page 180: “he does something the” changed to “he does something like the”



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