Light of heart and buoyant in body, I turned down toward the smithy. I looked in through the grimy, broken window and admired the brawny giant he looked there in the glare of the furnace, with his broad back to me, his huge arms bared to the shoulders. Little wonder, thought I, Jim Darrol can whirl the hammer and put the shot farther than any man in the Northern Counties. How the muscles bulged, and wriggled, and crawled under his dark, hairy skin! What a picture of manliness he portrayed! And, best of all,--I knew his heart was as good and clean as his body was sound. I tiptoed cautiously inside and slapped him between the shoulders. He wheeled about quickly. He always was a solemn-looking owl, but this morning his face was clouded and grim. As he recognised me, a terrible anger seemed to blaze up in his black eyes. I could see the muscles tighten in his arms and his fingers close firmly over the shaft of the hammer he held. I could see a new-born, but fierce hatred burning in every inch of his enormous frame. "Hello, Jim, old man! Who has been rubbing you the wrong way?" I cried. His jaws set. He raised his left hand and pointed with his finger to the open doorway. "Get out!" he growled, in a deep, hoarse voice. I stood dumbfounded for a brief moment, then I replied roughly and familiarly: "Oh, you go to the devil! Keep your anger for those who have caused it." "Get out, will you!" he cried again, taking a step nearer to me, his brows lowered, his lips drawn to a thin line. I had seen these danger signals in Jim before, but never with any ill intent toward me. I was so astounded I could scarcely think aright. What could he mean? What was the matter? "Jim, Jim," I soothed, "don't talk that way to old friends." "You're no friend of mine," he shouted. "Will you get out of here?" In some respects, I was like Jim Darrol: I did not like to be ordered about. "No! I will not get out," I snapped back at him. "I mean to remain here until you grow sensible." I went over to his anvil, set my leg across it and looked straight at him. He raised his hammer high, as if to strike me; and I felt then that if I had taken my eyes from Jim's for the briefest flash of time, my last minute on earth would have arrived. With an oath,--the first I ever heard him utter,--he cast the hammer from him, sending it clattering into a corner among the old horse shoes. "Damn you,--I hate you and all your cursed aristocratic breed," he snarled. And, with the spring of a tiger, he had me by the throat, with those great, grabbing hands of his, his fingers closing cruelly on my windpipe as he tried to shake the life out of me.