ed metal, and pour out, hot and hot, for the moulds to
swallow.

Raw material in big heaps lay about, waiting for the fire to ripen it.
Here was a stack of long, rough, rusty pigs, clumsy as the shillelabs of
the Anakim. There was a pile of short, thick masses, lying
higgledy-piggledy, stuff from the neighboring mines, which needed to be
crossed with foreign stock before it could be of much use in civilization.

Here, too, was raw material organized: a fly-wheel, large enough to keep
the knobbiest of asteroids revolving without a wabble; a cross-head,
cross-tail, and piston-rod, to help a great sea-going steamer breast the
waves; a light walking-beam, to whirl the paddles of a fast boat on the
river; and other members of machines, only asking to be put together and
vivified by steam and they would go at their work with a will.

From the black rafters overhead hung the heavy folds of a dim atmosphere,
half dust, half smoke. A dozen sunbeams, forcing their way through the
grimy panes of the grimy upper windows, found this compound quite palpable
and solid, and they moulded out of it a series of golden bars set side by
side aloft, like the pipes of an organ out of its perpendicular.

Wade grew indignant, as he looked about him and saw so much good stuff and
good force wasting for want of a little will and skill to train the force
and manage the stuff. He abhorred bankruptcy and chaos.

"All they want here is a head," he thought.

He shook his own. The brain within was well developed with healthy
exercise. It filled its case, and did not rattle like a withered kernel,
or sound soft like a rotten one. It was a vigorous, muscular brain. The
owner felt that he could trust it for an effort, as he could his lungs for
a shout, his legs for a leap, or his fist for a knock-down argument.

At the tap of the bell, the "bad lot" of men came together. They numbered
more than two hundred, though the Foundry was working short. They had been
notified that "that gonoph of a Whiffler was kicked out, and a new feller
was in, who looked cranky enough, and wanted to see 'em and tell 'em
whether he was a damn' fool or not."

So all hands collected from the different parts of the Foundry to see the
head.

They came up with easy and somewhat swaggering bearing,--a good many
roughs, with here and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached, swung
and tossed, for mere overplus of strength, the sledges with which they had
been tapping at t