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.

"This forging shop," the manufacturer said, entering it as he spoke, "is
where most of the metal parts of the gun are first roughly shaped, and
this man is working on part of a cartridg