Round Tom Clemmer’s forge a group of village lads was gathered, all looking on at the work with an interest that amounted well-nigh to fascination. As I came up, and stood unobserved in the shadow of the elder-tree, there was before me a picture in which two colours only were represented glowing crimson and deep velvety black. Young Tom stood, pincers in hand, watching the iron in the fire. Behind him his apprentice laboured at the bellows. With every wheezy puff, the furnace roared out an imprecation, and spat hot cinders upon the floor. It was a large piece of metal that Tom had in work, something out of the ordinary run of his business, it seemed, and he turned it and shifted it with an anxious eye. No one spoke a word, for somehow we all knew that a crisis was coming, and we were expected to hold our tongues until it was victoriously past. At length the moment came. Tom thrust the pincers into the blaze and drew the white-hot iron out upon the anvil. Immediately the apprentice left the bellows, seized a great hammer, and swinging it over his head, began to let fall on the metal an unceasing rain of mighty blows. As Tom twisted and manoeuvred the glowing mass about with all the strength of his wiry arms, it lengthened, squared itself in the middle, flattened out at each end, bent into complicated curves, then turned upon itself and was united miraculously head to tail. Still gripping the writhing thing with one hand, Tom took a punch in the other, and pointed it to various parts of the work; and wherever he pointed, the hammer drove a bolt-hole clean and true through the rose-red iron. Finally Tom lifted the finished piece above his head, and came striding to the door with it. The crowd of onlookers scattered right and left. Out into the darkness he plunged, and straight to the pool by the roadside. We saw the thing poised for a moment like a mammoth fire-fly over the water; and then, with a roar and an angry splutter, it vanished into the pond. It was scarcely six o’clock, and already the night was pitch-black, with a creeping, chilly air from the north. It was not loitering weather. People were moving briskly on their several ways. Cottage doors were shut, and windows diamonded with moisture. Roving about with no settled purpose but to humour the neighbourly fancy, and to identify myself with the evening life of the place, I presently came full tilt at a corner upon Farmer Coles. ‘The very man!’ said he, barring the way jovially with his stout oak stick. ‘Didn’t ye promise me that when I killed that four-year-old wether, ye’d come and take a bite along o’ us? Well, ’tis a saddle to-night, and I was on the road to fetch ye. Round about, man, and straight for the faarm!’