One Wednesday, in the middle of the afternoon, he was at work loading some pigs of iron into a truck that stood waiting on the siding near the furnace. It was good warm work for a winter’s day, and Abner had thrown off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and unfastened the neck of his shirt. He and his mate had just hoisted the last of the pigs into the truck when the furnace foreman gave the signal for the tapping of the nearest tower. Abner watched the proceeding as he put on his coat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The men, stripped to the waist, approached the vent of the furnace carrying a heavy crowbar with which they loosened the plug of fireclay which kept the contents of the furnace from escaping. They leapt aside as the first stream of molten mineral gushed out. The foreman watched them, shading his eyes from the heat. The fluid that came first was the dross of the ore which had sunk to the bottom of the furnace, and this was diverted so that it flowed into a wide pan where it would cool into a cake of brittle, iridescent slag. A moment later pure iron began to flow. The puddlers closed the entrance to the pool of slag, and molten metal crept, with the slow persistence of a lava-flow, down the central channel and into the moulds of sand that were ready to receive it. The damp air above the beds first steamed, then swam with heat. Not molten gold could have seemed more beautiful than this harsh, intractable metal. It ran into the moulds sluggishly and with a soft, hissing sound. Some one tapped Abner on the shoulder and drew him aside. It was Mr Hudson, who had walked down delicately from the office, so delicately that he had not even disturbed the two pencils wedged above his ears. He shivered slightly, for he had been shut up all day with a coke stove. Drawing Abner aside behind the line of trucks he began to talk to him about the cup-tie with the Albion. With the utmost friendliness he discussed the prospects of Mawne United in the match, which was now only ten days ahead. Abner answered him respectfully. Mr Hudson had not only given him his present comfortable job, but also carried in his pocket the future of every man employed in the works, for Mr Willis, whose eager mind was always set on expansions of the monster that he had created out of the fortune which his father-in-law had made in the Franco-Prussian war, was far too busy to worry his head about such details. ‘So you think we’ll win?’ said Mr Hudson, fingering the bronze cross on his watch-chain. ‘It bain’t no good playing any match if you don’t think you’ll win,’ said Abner. Mr Hudson stroked his red moustache. ‘I may say that the Albion has offered us a hundred pounds to play the match at North Bromwich, on their ground. The club could do with the money.’