"You can, perhaps, at present, but you will soon need them both. I don't think you ought to feel under the least obligation to me, for in advancing this money, I am benefiting myself and the whole neighborhood more than you. It will save me and all of us many a hard tramp through the woods. Besides, I don't like to get down on my knees to John Drew, beg him to work for me, and then pay him twice as much as it is worth."
"So I say, neighbor," said Bradford, "though—to give the devil his due—Drew is as good a blacksmith as ever stood behind an anvil, but mighty uncomfortable. But where are you going to get the bricks, neighbor, to build your chimneys?"
"Make them, John; there's sand and clay both in my pasture. So you see there's work enough for two years to hew the frame, make the shingles and clapboards, cut logs for boards, and make and burn the bricks."
Richardson improved the opportunity, while assisted by Bradford, to forge the polls or iron portion of two axes, and split up iron for nail-rods and also for horseshoes. He had never seen any one temper a tool, but he had often struck for Drew to forge axes; had seen him weld the steel to the iron, and knew he could do that. Although he had hired John to help him draw the large iron, because he could not do it, even with the aid of the boys, without great outlay of both time and labor, he didn't care to expose his awkwardness before him. In short, he preferred to be alone while adventuring upon this portion of the work, in order that he might study out the matter as he went along with no witness to his mistake but the boys, and as for tempering, we have seen how little he knew in respect to that.
The next morning he made his steel in the shape of a wedge, and split a corresponding crevice in the blade of the axe, and not quite so wide as the steel was thick, in order that it might bind on the sides as it entered, to hold it while heating, and put the whole in the fire for a weld. At the first trial the steel fell out on the ground the moment he struck it, and he lost his heat. He now shut the slit together so that the steel did not quite reach to the bottom, closed it up on the steel a little harder, put the axe in the fire, and before striking, struck the edge of the steel against the side of the anvil, to drive it home to the bottom of the slit, and thus succeeded in making a perfect weld.
But now came the crisis—to temper it. All depended upon this. So important a tool was an axe at that day, men wouldn't hesitate to travel twenty miles additional to a smith who had the reputation of excelling in the art, and no excellence of form or finish could compensate an axe-man for its absence.
He was well aware the reason the punch broke was on account of its hardness, and also that if he had, after putting it in water, let it cool some, it would have been less brittle; but he also knew the harder a tool is, the keener it cuts, and, forgetful of the fault in Drew's axes, imagined he could not get it too hard to cut wood. He thought there must be a vast difference between wood and iron, and that the harder the better; it would never break in wood.
Therefore, after finishing as well as he could, he made it as hot as he could without burning, and quenched it, put in a handle, and set to work grinding. The axe proved so hard, although he had made the blade very thin by hammering, that it was almost impossible to grind it, though he put a liberal allowance of sand on the stone. Susan and the boys took turns at the stone, the father encouraging them by declaring that it would cut like a ribbon, for it was harder than Pharaoh's heart.
The implement was ground at length. Richardson whet the edge and forthwith proceeded to a large hemlock that grew near, to try it. If unskilled in making, he was very far from being a novice in the use of an axe.