sn't ready for just yet. Billy Warlock owns that house and
lives in it and does business there, and the great big heart that thumps
in Billy's great big body and gives strength to Billy's great big arm,
loves every individual square inch of brick and earth and planking and
plaster in that old house from cellar to scuttle. Part with it!
Speculate on it! Sacrifice it to progress! Well, scarcely. Not if you
were to offer him its weight in solid gold. Not if its neighbor on one
side were a Mills Building and its neighbor on the other an Equitable.
Not if you were to build an elevated railroad around it and run ten
trains per minute, day and night. So long as Billy Warlock can keep
himself above ground, so long will that old house keep him company, and
so long will his forges blow fiery sparks in the cellar, while he
hammers and hums and hums and hammers on the anvil by his side.

It was just twelve years ago on Christmas Eve that Billy Warlock bought
the smithy in the cellar of that little old house. Billy had been
working for the man who owned it, and the man who owned it, being a
little short of wind and a trifle weak in his legs, had decided to sell
and retire. Billy had become the purchaser, and not without many qualms
and doubts as to the wisdom of assuming such heavy responsibilities.
Billy knew he was a good mechanic, and could put a tire on a wheel or a
shoe on a horse as quickly and as well as the next man. But it took a
good big pile of dollars, as Billy counted dollars, to get those forges,
and before he turned them over to his late employer Billy scratched his
head a good many times and did a power of thinking. But at last he let
go the dollars, and laid his big fist on the biggest forge and blew a
blast through the coals that made them glow brighter than ever they
glowed before. For it was the master and not the man who sent the
draught through them.

He bade the men good-night and wished them a Merry Christmas, closed the
doors, locked them tight, and looked his property over. It was worth
being proud of, make no mistake. It was all any man need wish for. It
was well stocked and in prime condition. The house, in the cellar of
which his smithy stood, was mainly let in lodgings. On the first floor,
raised just far enough above the street to give his customers a fair
passage out, there was a saloon and eating-room. Back of these were
Billy's own rooms, two nice big rooms where his mother took care of him
and coo