The clay floor and the clay above it were well baked when we came to the tree in the morning, though not yet enough, Hammer said, yet he did not at once rebuild the fire, but sent for a slender and knowing lad of the village to whom he gave a task of merit. The youth was to wriggle his slim body through the opening and ascend and plaster the trunk inside from bottom to top! It was a feat, but the youngster was equal to it, with the aid provided him. The men cut down a tree and from it took a long slender limb equal to the height of the dead trunk, and sheared off its twigs and many side branches, leaving always enough of each to make a foothold. They climbed the trunk and drew up the limb and let it down inside and thus provided the boy with a sort of ladder from which to do his work. The clay was passed up to him at first and later slung down to him from the top in a skin pouch which one of the men drew up. Two days it required for the resolute lad to complete the work well, but at its end he had bestowed upon him such spear-head and arrows and knife and hatchet of glittering copper as made him mightiest of small warriors and loftiest of men among a thousand. Then in the clay-bottomed and lined old tree trunk a mighty fire was built by Hammer and kept going until the clay was turned to brick. He had made a furnace! The fire roared up the opening as if drawn by all the demons of the sky in time of storm. Now Hammer took a lump of the clay and, working very carefully, pressed down into it, to half its thickness, a copper axe; upon this he laid a part, exceedingly thin, of the bladder of a stag, and afterward he pressed down more of the clay, so that the axe was all embedded save a portion of its handle; he then left the mess to dry for a time in the sun, and later heated it for a long time in a fire outside. When he drew it forth and it had cooled, the wooden handle outside the clay was burned away, and, by a little careful prying, the two halves of the mould which had been separated by the bladder came apart. These he fitted together again and enclosed in another mass of clay, leaving open only the opening into the hollow mould. The clay was set upon the ground, with the hole upward. Next Hammer brought from the village a covered earthen pot, not very deep, into one side of which he made a hole to receive the end of a long handle of wood, though before he put the handle in he covered it also with clay which he baked about it in a long fire. He had now a vessel which he could thrust unharmed into even such a dreadful furnace as he had made within the base of the tree. Into it he placed half a dozen ingots of the purest copper and thrust it, with its lid on, into the white-red heart of the flaming coals. The long handle was propped into place upon a crotch near the flames, and then we fed the fire, and waited!