HEY took Billy to Mr. Prescott’s house in his machine. They had to take a good many pillows and they planned to take an extra nurse, but the young doctor said that he was going up that way, and could just as well help.
Billy and the doctor were getting to be very good friends.
“He’s different,” Billy had confided to Uncle John, “but I like him a lot.”
“Nice people often are different,” said Uncle John.
Billy was so much better that he had some fun, while they were putting him into the auto, about his “stiff half,” as he called his left side.
“You just wait till I get that arm and that leg to working,” he said. “They’ll have to work over time.”
They put him in a large room with broad windows, where he could look down on the river and across at the mountains. There was a large brass bed in the room, but Mr. Prescott had had a hospital bed sent up.
“You’d have hard work to find me in that bed,” said Billy to the nurse, “wouldn’t you?”
It was a beautiful room. One of the maids told Billy that it had been Mr. Prescott’s mother’s room, and that he had always kept it as she had left it.
For the first week Billy feasted his eyes on color.
The walls of the room were soft brown; the paint was the color of cream. There were two sets of curtains: one a soft old blue, and over that another hanging of all sorts of colors. It took Billy a whole day to pick out the pattern on those curtains.
There was a mahogany dressing table, and there was a wonderful rug—soft shades of rose in the middle, and ever so many shades of blue in the border.
There was a fireplace with a shining brass fender. And there were—oh, so many things!
Then Billy spent almost another week on the pictures. But when he wanted to rest his eyes he looked at his old friends, the mountains, lying far across the river.
Mr. Prescott, too, liked the mountains. He came to sit by him in the evening, and they had real friendly times together watching the mountains fade away into the night, and seeing the electric lights flash out, one after another, all along the river.
Finally the doctors took off the splints. They had a great time doing it, testing his joints to see whether or not they would work.
Then Billy found that, as the young doctor said, there had been a “tall lot of worrying done about those bones.”
This time the white-haired doctor paid more attention to his bones than he did to Billy. He didn’t say anything till he went to put his glasses back in the case. Then he straightened up, and said:
“I’m happy to tell you, young man, that those joints will work all right after they get used to working again.”
The next day Billy went down the long flight of stairs, with Mr. Prescott on one side, and the nurse on the other, to the great library, right under the room where he had been.
“Feel pretty well, now that you’re down?” asked Mr. Prescott, after the nurse had gone up-stairs.
“Sure, sir,” answered Billy.
“Then follow me,” said Mr. Prescott, opening a door at the end of the library.
Billy followed, but he had hardly stepped in before he stepped back.
“Why, Billy,” said Mr. Prescott, coming quickly back to him, “I didn’t mean to frighten you. We’ll stay in the library.”
Now the doctor had told Mr. Prescott that Billy mustn’t be frightened by anything if they could help it, for he’d been through about all a boy’s nerves could stand. So Mr. Prescott drew Billy over to the big sofa, fixed some pillows around him, and put a foot-rest under his leg.
Then Mr. Prescott settled himself in a great chair as though he had nothing in the world to do except to talk to Billy.
“That,” said Mr. Prescott, “is my treasure room. When I go in there, I think of brave men, and of how they helped the world along. What made you step back?”
“Because,” answered Billy, half ashamed, “I thought I saw a man in the corner pointing something at me.”
“I ought,” said Mr. Prescott, “to have thought of that before I took you into the room.
“I’ve been trying, for some time, to make that old suit of armor and that spear look like a knight standing there, ready for action. I must have, at last, succeeded, but I’m sorry that it startled you.
“You see I’m naturally interested in weapons of war because they are all made of steel or iron.”
“Battle-ships, too,” said Billy.
“Yes,” said Mr. Prescott. “But you mustn’t forget the great naval battles that were won with ships of wood.
“There’s one thing in that room,” Mr. Prescott went on, “that I am sure you will like to see. It is my great-great-grandfather’s musket.”
“Oh,” said Billy, “I didn’t know that you had a great-great-grandfather.”
“I did,” said Mr. Prescott, just as quietly as if Billy had been talking sense. “He was a brave man, too. That is the musket that he had when he was with General Washington at Valley Forge.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Billy again.
“Know about Valley Forge, do you?”
“A little,” answered Billy, very humbly.
“That’s enough to start on,” said Mr. Prescott.
Billy could almost imagine that Uncle John was talking. Billy spent a great deal more time every day than anybody realized in thinking about his Uncle John.
“Perhaps you don’t know, many people don’t,” said Mr. Prescott, “that the first name of that place was Valley Creek. It was changed to Valley Forge because a large forge plant was established there. It was one of the first places in this state where they made iron and steel.
“By the way, George Washington’s father was a maker of pig iron down in Virginia.”
“Oh!” said Billy. “There seem to be a lot of things to know about iron.”
“There’s really no end to them,” said Mr. Prescott. “They begin way back in history. Did you ever read about Goliath the giant?”
“My father used to read those stories to me,” answered Billy, “out of a great big Bible.”
“Was it like this one?” asked Mr. Prescott, getting up quickly and bringing him, from the library table, a great Bible, covered with light brown leather.
“That looks almost like ours,” answered Billy.
“This,” said Mr. Prescott, “is the one my mother used to read to me. There’s a great deal about iron in it,” he added, as he put it away carefully.
“To come back to Goliath,” said Mr. Prescott. “His spear had a head of iron that weighed six hundred shekels.
“Then there was that iron bedstead of Og, king of Bashan. Ever hear of him?”
“I don’t seem,” answered Billy, “to remember about him.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have remembered,” said Mr. Prescott, “if I hadn’t been so interested in iron.”
“That,” said Billy, “was probably on account of your grandfather, and your father,” he added quickly.
“There’s a great deal about iron in the Bible,” said Mr. Prescott. “Only four or five pages over in Genesis there is a verse about a man named Tubal-Cain, who was a master-worker in brass and iron.
“Then there are some things in mythology that you ought to know, now that you’re interested in iron. One of them is that the old Romans, who imagined all sorts of gods, said that iron was discovered by Vulcan. They said, too, that he forged the thunderbolts of Jupiter.
“Now, then, Billy, how about my treasure room?”
“Ready, sir,” answered Billy, working himself out from among his pillows.
“Once,” said Mr. Prescott, walking close by Billy, “I went into a room something like this, only it had many more things in it. The room was in Sir Walter Scott’s house. He had one of Napoleon’s pistols from Waterloo.
“He called his room an armory. I generally call mine my ‘treasure room.’”
“I think I like armory better,” said Billy.
“Then,” said Mr. Prescott, “will you walk into my armory?”
“First of all,” said Billy, “I want to see that gun—musket.”
“Here it is,” said Mr. Prescott. “There,” he added, pointing to a picture in an oval brass frame, “is my great-great-grandfather.”
“Oh!” said Billy.
Then Mr. Prescott knew that Billy had never before seen a silhouette.
“That kind of picture,” he said, “does make a man look as black as his own hat, though it is often a good profile. I used to make them myself. Some night I’ll make one of you.
“Now that you’ve seen the musket, I think that you had better take a look at this suit of armor that I have been trying to make stand up here like a knight.
“This coat of mail is made of links, you see. Sometimes they were made of scales of iron linked together.
“The work that those old smiths did is really wonderful, especially when you remember that their only tools were hammer, pincers, chisel, and tongs. It took both time and patience to weld every one of those links together.”
“I don’t think I understand what weld means,” said Billy.
“When iron is heated to a white heat,” said Mr. Prescott, “it can be hammered together into one piece. Most metals have to be soldered, you know. The blacksmiths generally use a powder that will make the iron weld more easily, because it makes the iron soften more quickly, but iron is its own solder.
“You’d better sit down here while I explain a little about this suit of armor; then you’ll know what you’re reading about when you come to a knight.
“I suppose that every boy knows what a helmet and a vizor are; they learn about that from seeing firemen.”
“And policemen,” said Billy.
“Only the helmets of the knights covered their faces and ended in guards for their necks. I dare say that you don’t know what a gorget is.”
“No,” said Billy, “I don’t.”
“That is the piece of armor that protected the throat. Here is the cuirass or breast-plate, and the tassets that covered the thighs. They’re hooked to the cuirass. And here are the greaves for the shins. There are names for all the arm pieces, too, but we’ll let those go just now.
“This shield, you see, is wood covered with iron, and part of the handle inside is wood. A man must have weighed a great deal when he had a full suit of armor on, and he must have been splendid to look at and rather hard to kill.
“Those old smiths certainly made a fine art of their work in iron. They got plenty of credit for it, too. In the Anglo-Saxon times they were really treated as officers of rank.
“When a man was depending on his sword to protect his family, he naturally respected a man who could make good swords. The smiths sort of held society together.”
Billy, looking around the room, saw that one side had spears and shields and helmets hung all over it; and on the wall at the end were pistols, bows and arrows, and some dreadful knives.
“Did all those,” he asked, pointing at the end of the room, “kill somebody?”
“Ask it the other way,” said Mr. Prescott; “did they all protect somebody? Then I can safely say that they did, for any foe would think twice before he attacked a man in mail. These things were all made because they were needed.”
“What do you suppose put the armorers out of business?”
“I don’t know,” answered Billy.
“Gunpowder,” said Mr. Prescott. “A man could be blown up, armor and all.”
“Then they had to make guns,” said Billy.
“And they’ve been at that ever since,” said Mr. Prescott.
“Come over to this cabinet, and I’ll show you my special treasure.
“Shut your eyes, Billy, and think of walls in a desert long enough and high enough to shut in a whole city.”
Billy shut his eyes. “I see the walls,” he said.
“Now, just inside the wall, think a garden with great beds of roses.”
“Blush roses?” queried Billy.
“Damask,” replied Mr. Prescott; “pink, pretty good size.”
“That’s done!” said Billy.
“Now, in that garden, think an Arab chief, a sheik, mounted on a beautiful Arabian horse, and—open your eyes!”
“Here is his sword!”
“I saw him clearly!” exclaimed Billy, his eyes flying wide open.
“HERE IS HIS SWORD”
“My!” he said, “but that’s a beauty!”
“It is,” said Mr. Prescott. “Look!”
Then he took the hilt in his right hand and the point in his left, and began to bend the point toward the hilt.
“Don’t,” cried Billy. “You’ll break it!”
“The tip and the hilt of the best of the old swords were supposed to come together,” said Mr. Prescott.
“See, this has an inscription in Arabic.”
“I have a genuine Toledo, too, but you’ve been in here long enough. Let’s go back into the library. You may come in here whenever you like. Mornings, I think, would be the best time.”
When Billy was comfortably settled among his pillows, with the Damascus sword on the sofa by him, Mr. Prescott said:
“Men, in the olden time, thought so much of their swords that they often named them, and had them baptized by the priest. The great emperor Charlemagne had a sword named ‘Joyeuse.’
“Sometimes, too, the old bards sang about swords and their makers.”
“Tell me,” said Billy, “how they made swords.”
“The people way over in the East understood the process of converting iron into steel, but in those days they had plenty of gold and very little steel, so swords were sometimes made of gold with only an edge of steel.
“The steel swords were made by hammering little piles of steel plates together. They were heated, hammered, and doubled over, end to end, until the layers of steel in a single sword ran up into the millions.
“Now, we’ll come back to the present time, and I’ll show you something that I brought home yesterday to put in my treasure room.”
Billy watched eagerly, while Mr. Prescott took a package from the library table, and opened it.
Then, in delight, he exclaimed:
“The great iron key!”
“The same,” said Mr. Prescott, “and glad enough I am to have it here.
“When I gave Tom the new key, he didn’t look altogether happy. I think the fellow really has enjoyed having the care of this one.”
“I suppose,” said Billy, “that the new one is so small that he will be afraid of losing it. They don’t make such large keys nowadays.”
“That statement may be true in general,” said Mr. Prescott, “but the fact is that the new key is as large as this.”
Then Mr. Prescott stopped talking, but he looked right at Billy.
“You don’t mean,” said Billy, after thinking for a minute as hard as he could, “that you have had a key made, do you?”
“That is the meaning that I intended to convey,” answered Mr. Prescott. “But I’m not going to tease a fellow that is down-stairs for the first time, so I’ll tell you, right away, that Mr. John Bradford made the casting for the new key, and he used this for a pattern.”
“Oh!” said Billy, smiling.
“You didn’t like it very well, did you, Billy,” asked Mr. Prescott, “when I put that key back in the door?”
“No,” answered Billy, “I didn’t.”
“Just at that time,” said Mr. Prescott, “a great many things had to be considered. I decided that it was better to risk the key than to risk letting the man know that we knew what had happened.
“You never knew either, did you, how many nights after that I spent in the office?”
“Honest?” asked Billy, opening his eyes very wide.
“Running a mill, I’d have you understand, Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott, “is no easy job.”
“It doesn’t seem to be,” said Billy, just as earnestly as if he had been a man.
“I must go,” said Mr. Prescott. “I had almost forgotten that I am one of the modern workers in iron.
“Billy,” he said suddenly, turning as he reached the door, “did you ever know anybody by the name of Smith?”
Billy’s answer was a merry laugh.
“You needn’t laugh, Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott. “If you do, perhaps I won’t tell you something.”
“Do,” said Billy.
“People,” said Mr. Prescott, coming part way back into the room, “didn’t always have last names. When they came into fashion, all the workers on anvils were given Smith for a last name. That’s where the Smiths came from!”
“Honest?” asked Billy.
“Fact,” said Mr. Prescott, as he went through the door.
When the nurse came down a little later, she found Billy fast asleep among the cushions, and his hand was lying on the hilt of the Damascus blade.
