"If I did not," I returned, "that would be the fault of my weakness, and
would not affect the assertion I have just made, that it is a fine thing to
work in fire."

"Well, you may be right," he rejoined with a sigh, as, throwing the
horse-shoe he had been fashioning from the tongs on the ground, he next let
the hammer drop beside the anvil, and leaning against it held his head
for a moment between his hands, and regarded the floor. "It does not much
matter to me," he went on, "if I only get through my work and have done
with it. No man shall say I shirked what I'd got to do. And then when it's
over there won't be a word to say agen me, or--"

He did not finish the sentence. And now I could see the sunlight lying in a
somewhat dreary patch, if the word _dreary_ can be truly used with respect
to any manifestation of sunlight, on the dark clay floor.

"I hope you are not ill," I said.

He made no answer, but taking up his tongs caught with it from a beam one
of a number of roughly-finished horse-shoes which hung there, and put it on
the fire to be fashioned to a certain fit. While he turned it in the fire,
and blew the bellows, I stood regarding him. "This man will do for my
work," I said to myself; "though I should not wonder from the look of him
if it was the last piece of work he ever did under the New Jerusalem." The
smith's words broke in on my meditations.

"When I was a little boy," he said, "I once wanted to stay at home from
school. I had, I believe, a little headache, but nothing worth minding. I
told my mother that I had a headache, and she kept me, and I helped her at
her spinning, which was what I liked best of anything. But in the afternoon