lle to herself.

"It's this pipe fetches the binzole from the tank outside, and the mouth
of it's widin the door; and this is the stop-cock as lets it on."

So saying, Tommy threw open the oven-door, and pointed to the black end
of a pipe just within. At the same time he turned a handle on the
outside, and let on a stream of benzine or naphtha, which blazed
fiercely up with a lurid flame strongly suggestive of the pictured
reward of evil-doers in another life.

Next, Tommy proceeded to explain, after his own fashion, how the oil in
the caldrons above, urged by these fires, departed in steam and agony
through long pipes called worms, the only outlet from the otherwise
air-tight stills, which worms, wriggling out at the end of the building,
plunged into a bath of cold water provided for them in a huge square
tank fed by a bright mountain-stream winding down from the bluff above
in a fashion so picturesque as to be quite out of keeping with its
ultimate destination.

Emerging from their cold bath, the worms, crawling along the ground
behind the still-house, arrived at the back of another building, called
the test-room; and here each one, making a sharp turn to enable him to
enter, was pierced at the angle thus formed, and a vertical pipe some
ten feet in length inserted.

The object of these pipes was to carry off the gas still mingled with
the oil; and, looking attentively, Miselle could distinguish a
flickering column ascending from each pipe and forming itself so humanly
against the evening sky as to vindicate the superstition of the Saxons,
who first named this ether _geist_.

"What a splendid illumination, if only those ten pipes were lighted some
dark night!" suggested Miselle.

"Phe-ew! An' yer lumernation wouldn't stop there long, I can tell yer,
Ma'am," retorted Tommy. "The whole works ud be in a swither 'fore iver
we'd time to ax what was comin'."

"They would? And why?"

"The binzole, Ma'am, the binzole. It's the Divil's own stuff to manage,
an' there's no thrustin' it wid so much as the light uv a pipe nigh
hand. The air is full of it; and if you was so much as to sthrike a
match here where we stand, it ud be all day wid us 'fore we'd time to
think uv it. You should know that yersilf, Sir," continued he, turning
to Mr. Williams.

"Yes," returned that gentleman, with a grimace. "I learned the nature of
benzine pretty thoroughly when I first came on the Creek. I had been at
work over one of the wells