John snapped his fingers triumphantly at the lazy shepherd-boy on reaching the foundry gate. He rushed in, disregarding all the usual decorums about obtaining entrance. Through the paved yard ran John, and into the huge vault where the furnaces were roaring, and where all the workmen looked so impish that it was no wonder he did not immediately discover his father among them. He nearly ran foul of one who was bearing a ladle of molten metal of a white heat, and set his foot on the exquisitely levelled sand-bed which was prepared to form the plate. Scolded on one side, jostled on another, the breathless boy could only ask eagerly for his father. “Let go the lad’s collar,” cried one of the workmen to another, adding in a low voice, “’Tis some mishap about his poor mother. Can’t ye help him to find his father?” Kay was roasting and fuming in the red glare of one of the furnaces when his boy’s wide eyes looked up in his face, while he cried, “There’s such news, father! The greatest news there has been this many a day. There’s an Order in Council, father; and the people are all about the Cock and Gun, and the newspaper is being read, and everybody coming out of their houses. Only think, father! It is certainly true. There is an Order in Council.” “An Order in Council! Well, what of that? What is the Order about?” “About? O, they did not say what it is about,—at least, nobody that I heard speaking. But I’ll run back and ask, directly.” “You will do no such thing. You would bring back only half your story. What should a child know about an Order in Council?” he asked of his fellow-workmen, who began to gather round. “Can’t one of you go and learn what it is he means?—for I suppose some news is really come; and I can’t leave the furnace just now.” John slunk away mortified to a corner where he could spread wet sand, in case any passing workman should be bountiful enough to spare him the brimmings of some overflowing ladle. It was very odd that his father did not seem to understand his news when everybody, down to the very babies, seemed to be so glad of it at the Cock and Gun. The messenger soon returned, and then the tidings produced all the effects that the veriest newsmonger could have desired. John ceased his sand-levelling to creep near and listen how there had been issued an Order in Council for opening the ports, and allowing the importation of foreign grain. There was a great buzz of voices, and that of the furnace was the loudest of all. “Now you hear, lad,” said one of the boy’s tormentors. “The Order is for the importation of foreign grain.” “Just as if I did not know that half-an-hour ago,” said John solemnly. “Why, I was at the Cock and Gun the minute after the news came.” And the lad rescued himself from the man’s grasp; and went in search of some one else whom he might throw into a state of admiration. He met Mr. Oliver himself, saying,