rd threw down his paper with a loud "Hah!" and turned
to his nephew.

"Well, Tom," he said, "I don't know what I am to do with you now I have
got you. You don't want to go on with the law?"

"Oh no, sir, I am too stupid," said Tom quickly.

"Why do you say `sir,' my boy? Will not uncle do for your mother's
brother?"

"Uncle James told me always to say `sir,' sir--uncle I mean."

"Ah, but I'm not your Uncle James, and I like the old-fashioned way.
Well, as you are too stupid for the law, I suppose I must try you with
something easier--say mathematics."

Tom looked at him aghast.

"A nice pleasant subject, full of calculations. But we shall see. I
suppose you will not mind helping me?"

"I shall be glad to, uncle."

"That's right; but you don't know yet what I want you to do. You will
have to take your coat off sometimes, work hard, put on an apron, and
often get dirty."

"Gardening, uncle? Oh, I shall like that."

"Yes; gardening sometimes, but in other ways too. I do a deal of
tinkering now and then." Tom stared.

"Yes, I mean it: with tin and solder, and then I try brass and turning.
I have a regular workshop, you know, with a small forge and anvil. Can
you blow bellows?"

Tom stared a little harder as he gazed in the clear grey eyes and the
calm unruffled countenance, in which there was not the dawn of a smile.

"I never tried," said Tom, "but I feel sure I could."

"And I feel sure you cannot without learning; some of the
easiest-looking things are the hardest, you know. Of course any one can
blow forge bellows after a fashion, but it requires some pains to manage
the blast aright, and not send the small coal and sparks flying over the
place, while the iron is being burned up."

"Iron burned up?" said Tom.

"To be sure. If I put a piece in the forge, I could manage the supply
of oxygen so as to bring it from a cherry heat right up to a white,
while possibly at your first trial you would burn a good deal of the
iron away."

"I did not know that," said Sam.

"And I suppose there are a few other little things you do not know, my
boy. There's a deal to learn, Tom, and the worst or best of it is, that
the more you find out the more you realise that there is no end to
discovery. But so much for the blacksmith's work."

"But you are not a blacksmith, uncle."

"Oh yes, I am, Tom, and a carpenter too. A bad workman I know, but I
manage what I want. Then there is my new business too a