ead evenly over it with a brush, great care being taken to let none
of the liquid used get upon the wool side of the skin. The pelt was then
folded and left from eight to ten hours until the solution which had
been brushed over it had penetrated it and loosened the hair. The wool
could then very easily be pulled off, sorted as the skins were unhaired,
and sold to dealers as "pulled wool."

One fact interested Peter very much, and that was that usually the slats
were thinnest where the wool was longest.

"I suppose the strength of the sheep all went to its hair," speculated
he to Nat. "Isn't it funny that it should!"

Another thing the boys learned about sheepskins which was very different
from the treatment of calfskins was that before the slats could be
tanned they had to be put through a powerful press and have the grease
squeezed out of them.

"The skin of a sheep has a vast amount of oil in it," explained one of
the workmen, "and it is impossible to do anything until this grease has
been extracted; so we put a bunch of skins under a heavy press and then
collect the grease that runs out, refine, and sell it."

Peter and Nat watched this pressing with great interest.

When the skins came out of the press they were so hard and stiff that it
was necessary to put them into the revolving drums that separated and
softened them. This was called "wheeling up the slats." The odor
in the press room was far worse than anything that Peter had yet
encountered--much more disagreeable than was an ordinary beamhouse.
Both he and Nat were only too glad when noon time came and they could
get out into the air.

"Whew!" cried Peter, throwing himself down in the sunshine, "I hope they
don't put us in that press room to work, Nat."

"It's fierce, isn't it?" Nat answered. "The men must hate it."

"I suppose they get accustomed to it just as I got used to the
beamhouse," Peter said. "Why, when I began work in the beamhouse of
Factory 1 I thought I never could endure it. Do you remember how you
tried to cheer me up that first day?"

Nat laughed at the memory.

"Indeed I do. You looked perfectly hopeless, Peter."

"That's about the way I felt," smiled Peter, "and I believe I'd feel so
again if I thought I had weeks of that press room smell before me."

But Peter need not have feared any such calamity, for after lunch he and
Nat were given a lesson in tanning sheepskins and were told they were
to work at that task until further