aw through a bar of that moderate thickness. "No," said
he, "they were disturbed, or else some other idea struck them all of a
sudden; or else they hadn't given themselves time, and are coming again
to-morrow. I hope they are. By six o'clock to-night, I'll have a common
wooden shutter hung with six good hinges on each side, easy to open
at the center; only, across the center, I'll fix a Waterloo cracker
inside."

"A Waterloo cracker!"

"Ay, but such a one as you never saw. I shall make it myself. It shall
be only four inches long, but as broad as my hand, and enough detonating
powder in it to blow the shutter fifty feet into the air: and if there
should be one of Jobson's lads behind the shutter at the time, why he'll
learn flying, and naught to pay for wings."

"Why, sir, you are planning the man's death!"

"And what is HE planning? Light your forge, and leave the job to me. I'm
Hillsborough too, and they've put my blood up at last."

While Henry lighted his forge, Mr. Cheetham whipped out a rule, and
measured the window exactly. This done, he went down the stairs, and
crossed the yard to go to his office.

But, before he could enter it, a horrible thing occurred in the room
he had just left; so horrible, it made him, brave as he was, turn and
scream like a woman.

Some miscreant, by a simple but ingenious means, which afterward
transpired, had mixed a quantity of gunpowder with the smithy-slack or
fine cinders of Henry's forge. The moment the forge was hot, the powder
ignited with a tremendous thud, a huge mass of flame rushed out, driving
the coals with it, like shot from a gun; Henry, scorched, blackened,
and blinded, was swept, as by a flaming wind, against the opposite wall;
then, yelling, and stark mad with fright (for nothing drives men out
of their wits like an explosion in a narrow space), he sprang at the
window, head foremost, and with such velocity that the sawed iron
snapped like a stick of barley-sugar, and out he went head foremost;
and this it was made Cheetham scream, to see him head downward, and the
paving-stones below.

But the aperture was narrow: his body flew through, but his tight arm
went round the unbroken upright, and caught it in the bend of the elbow.

Then Cheetham roared, "Hold on, Little! Hold on, I tell you!"

The scared brain of a man accustomed to obey received the command almost
without the mind; and the grinders and forgers, running wildly into the
yard, saw the obnoxiou