"Well," was the reply, "I don't see that it can do us any harm, anyway, and if you are so interested you can come along with me. I like to go through the works every once in so often, and perhaps I can tell you more about these things than any other man in the place, because I get a chance to see it as a whole." "If you would," began the boy. "Come along, then," said the official, without further parley, and he led the way out of the general offices and across the street to the first of a huge group of buildings. Walking through the yard the two came presently to a long structure running alongside the railroad sidings. "This," Hamilton was informed, "is just the storeroom for raw material as it comes off the cars." He turned half round as though to leave the building, but Hamilton stopped him with a question. "Steel, principally?" he asked. "Steel." "What kind of steel?" persisted Hamilton. "Oh, different kinds." "Why different kinds?" continued the boy, working his eyebrows, as was his habit when in earnest. "For different kinds of guns?" "Yes," answered the older man, evidently deciding that he would have to go into the matter thoroughly with Hamilton, and passing on into the storehouse. "We get mostly three kinds of steel, nickel steel, carbon steel, and soft steel, with a small proportion of other forms. We do that for the very reason you mentioned, that they are used for different kinds of work. Nickel steel we do not use for the cheaper grades of guns, because it is so much harder, and costs so much more to work. Indeed, very few gun-makers use nickel steel for barrels at all, but we do on all our high-grade work." "I notice," Hamilton said, "that all the steel here is stored in bars and rods. Do you buy it that way, or have you a rolling mill in connection with the plant?" "Buy it," the other said immediately. "You can't run a rolling mill at a profit except on a large scale, and, anyway, this is too far from the source of supply. We get our copper in ingots, but not our steel." "I notice," the boy continued, fingering a long ticket attached to a bundle of steel rods by a wire, "that you say here, 'Do not disturb until report from laboratory is received.'" "Certainly," said the other, "every order as it comes in is tested. We have two laboratories, a physical and a chemical, and not a scrap of material is used until it is found to be fully up to the specifications. There's no guesswork there, but the most rigid scientific tests. That keeps any poor material from slipping through. "Now," he continued, "I'll show you what happens to those bars." He led the way to a small building where the bars were cut into certain recognized lengths for the men at the drop forges to handle.