have no tools that
will lighten it--it will not yield to the scrub."

However, a certain amount can be done in this direction by using, on the
shadows that are _just_ too strong for the scrub, a tool made by
grinding down on sandpaper a large hog-hair brush, and, of these, what
are called stencil-brushes are as good as any (fig. 45).

You do not use this by dragging it over the glass as you drag a scrub,
but by _pricking_ the whole of the surface which you wish to lighten.
This will make little pinholes all over it, which will be sufficient to
let the patch of shadow gently down to the level of the surrounding
lighter modelling, and will prevent your dark shadows looking like
actual "patches," as we described them doing a little way back.

[Illustration: FIG. 45.]

Further than this you cannot go: for I cannot at all see how the next
process I am to describe can be a good one, though I once thought, as I
suppose most do, that it would really solve the difficulty. What I
allude to is the use of the needle.

_Of Work Etched out with a Needle._--The needle is a very good and
useful tool for stained glass, in certain operations, but I am now to
speak of it as being used over whole areas _as a substitute for the
scrub, in order to deal with a matt too dense for the scrub to
penetrate._

The needle will, to be sure, remove such a matt; that is to say, will
remove lines out of it, quite clear and sharp, and this, too, out of a
matt so dense, that what remains does not fire away much in the kiln.
Here is a tempting thing then! to have one's work unchanged by the fire!
And if you could achieve this without changing the character of the work
for the worse, no doubt this method would be a very fine thing. But let
me trace it step by step and try to describe what happens.

You have painted your outline and you put a very heavy matt over it.

Peril No. 1.--If your matt is so dense that it will not _fire off_, it
must very nearly approach the point of density at which it will _fry_.
How then about the portions of it which have been painted on, as I have
said, over _another_ layer of pigment in the shape of the _outline_?
Here is a _danger_. But even supposing that all is safe, and that you
have just stopped short of the danger point. You have now your dense,
rich, brown matt, with the outline just showing through it. Proceed to
model it with the needle. The first stroke will really frighten you; for
a flash of silver light