"Aye!" said their guide, answering the girl's questions as well as he could in the roar--"that's the great furnace where they boil the steel. Now you watch--when the flame--look! it's white now--turns blue--that means the process is done--the steel's cooked. Then they'll bring the vat beneath--turn the furnace over--you'll see the steel pour out." "Is that a railway?" She pointed to a raised platform in front of the furnace. A truck bearing a high metal tub was running along it. "Yes--it's from there they feed the furnace--in a minute you'll see the tub tip over." There was a signal bell--a rattle of machinery. The tub tilted--a great jet of white flame shot upwards from the furnace--the great mouth had swallowed down its prey. "And those men with their wheelbarrows? Why do they let them go so close?" She shuddered and put her hand over her eyes. The foreman laughed. "Why, it's quite safe!--the tub's moved out of the way. You see the furnace has to be fed with different stuffs---the tub brings one sort and the barrows another. Now look--they're going to turn it over. Stand back!" He held up his hand to bid Mason come under shelter. Laura looked round her. "Where are the other two?" she asked. "Oh! they've gone to see the bar-testing--they'll be here soon. Seaton knows the man in charge of the testing workshop." Laura ceased to think of them. She was absorbed in the act before her. The great lip of the furnace began to swing downwards; fresh showers of sparks fled in wild curves and spirals through the shed; out flowed the stream of liquid steel into the vat placed beneath. Then slowly the fire cup righted itself; the flame roared once more against the wall; the swarming figures to either side began once more to feed the monster--men and trucks and wheelbarrow, the little railway line, and the iron pillars supporting it, all black against the glare---- Laura stood breathless--her wild nature rapt by what she saw. But while she hung on the spectacle before her, Mason never spared it a glance. He was conscious of scarcely anything but her--her childish form, in the little clinging dress, her white face, every soft feature clear in the glow, her dancing eyes, her cloud of reddish hair, from which her wide black hat had slipped away in the excitement of her upward gaze. The lad took the image into his heart--it burnt there as though it too were fire. "Now let's look at something else!" said Laura at last, turning away with a long breath.