The History of Gutta-Percha Willie | Page 7

on Willie's cap, and on his father's hat.
How red the glow of the smith's fire looked! It was a great black cavern
with a red heart to it in the midst of whiteness.

The smith was a great powerful man, with bare arms, and blackened
face. When they entered, he and two other men were making the axle of
a wheel. They had a great lump of redhot iron on the anvil, and were
knocking a big hole through it-not boring it, but knocking it through
with a big punch. One of the men, with a pair of tongslike pincers, held
the punch steady in the hole, while the other two struck the head of it
with alternate blows of mighty hammers called sledges, each of which
it took the strength of two brawny arms to heave high above the head
with a great round swing over the shoulder, that it might come down
with right good force, and drive the punch through the glowing iron,
which was, I should judge, four inches thick. All this Willie thought he
could understand, for he knew that fire made the hardest metal soft; but
what he couldn't at all understand was this: every now and then they
stopped heaving their mighty sledges, the third man took the punch out
of the hole, and the smith himself, whose name was Willet (and will it
he did with a vengeance, when he had anything on the anvil before
him), caught up his tongs in his hand, then picked up a little bit of black
coal with the tongs, and dropped it into the hole where the punch had
been, where it took fire immediately and blazed up. Then in went the
punch again, and again the huge hammering commenced, with such
bangs and blows, that the smith was wise to have no floor to his smithy,
for they would surely have knocked a hole in that, though they were not
able to knock the anvil down halfway into the earth, as the giant smith
in the story did.
While this was going on, Mr Macmichael, perceiving that the operation
ought not to be interrupted any more than a surgical one, stood quite
still waiting, and Willie stood also-absorbed in staring, and gradually
creeping nearer and nearer to the anvil, for there were no sparks flying
about to make it dangerous to the eyes, as there would have been if they
had been striking the iron itself instead of the punch.
As soon as the punch was driven through, and the smith had dropped
his sledge-hammer, and begun to wipe his forehead, Willie spoke.
"Mr Willet," he said, for he knew every man of any standing in the
village by name and profession, "why did you put bits of coal into the

hole you were making? I should have thought it would be in the way
rather than help you."
"So it would, my little man," answered Willet, with no grim though
grimy smile, "if it didn't take fire and keep getting out of the way all the
time it kept up the heat. You see we depend on the heat for getting
through, and it's much less trouble to drop a bit of coal or two into the
hole, than to take up the big axle and lay it in the fire again, not to
mention the time and the quantity of coal it would take to heat it up
afresh."
"But such little bits of coal couldn't do much?" said Willie.
"They could do enough, and all that's less after that is saving," said the
smith, who was one of those men who can not only do a thing right but
give a reason for it. "You see I was able to put the little bits just in the
right place."
"I see! I see!" cried Willie. "I understand! But, papa, do you think Mr
Willet is the proper person to ask to set your lock right?"
"I haven't a doubt of it," said Mr Macmichael, taking it out of his
greatcoat pocket, and unfolding the piece of paper in which he had
wrapped it. "Why do you make a question of it?"
"Because look what great big huge things he does! How could those
tremendous hammers set such a little thing as that right? They would
knock it all to pieces. Don't you think you had better take it to the
watchmaker?"
"If I did, Willie, do you know what you would say the moment you saw
him at work?"
"No, papa. What should I say?"
"You would say, 'Don't you think, papa, you had better take it back to
the smith?"

"But why should I say that?"
"Because, when you saw his tools beside this lock, you would think the
tools so small