his shop without
seeing him just as steadily at work as now. It would be a flight beyond
his usual foolery to seek for the perpetual motion; and yet I know
enough of my old business to be certain that what he is now so busy
with is no part of the machinery of a watch."

"Perhaps, father," said Annie, without showing much interest in the
question, "Owen is inventing a new kind of timekeeper. I am sure he has
ingenuity enough."

"Poh, child! He has not the sort of ingenuity to invent anything better
than a Dutch toy," answered her father, who had formerly been put to
much vexation by Owen Warland's irregular genius. "A plague on such
ingenuity! All the effect that ever I knew of it was to spoil the
accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop. He would turn the sun
out of its orbit and derange the whole course of time, if, as I said
before, his ingenuity could grasp anything bigger than a child's toy!"

"Hush, father! He hears you!" whispered Annie, pressing the old man's
arm. "His ears are as delicate as his feelings; and you know how easily
disturbed they are. Do let us move on."

So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie plodded on without further
conversation, until in a by-street of the town they found themselves
passing the open door of a blacksmith's shop. Within was seen the
forge, now blazing up and illuminating the high and dusky roof, and now
confining its lustre to a narrow precinct of the coal-strewn floor,
according as the breath of the bellows was puffed forth or again
inhaled into its vast leathern lungs. In the intervals of brightness it
was easy to distinguish objects in remote corners of the shop and the
horseshoes that hung upon the wall; in the momentary gloom the fire
seemed to be glimmering amidst the vagueness of unenclosed space.
Moving about in this red glare and alternate dusk was the figure of the
blacksmith, well worthy to be viewed in so picturesque an aspect of
light and shade, where the bright blaze struggled with the black night,
as if each would have snatched his comely strength from the other. Anon
he drew a white-hot bar of iron from the coals, laid it on the anvil,
uplifted his arm of might, and was soon enveloped in the myriads of
sparks which the strokes of his hammer scattered into the surrounding
gloom.

"Now, that is a pleasant sight," said the old watchmaker. "I know what
it is to work in gold; but give me the worker in iron after all is said
and done. He spends his labo