"Tell your mother I can't come yet; don't know when I can come; to eat dinner, and not wait for me."
"Nor me, nuther," said Clem. "I ain't coming till father comes."
He quenched the axe, put the poll on the fire, and while looking at it and counting, thought he noticed a flaw in the steel. Rubbing it in the sand and coal-dust of the forge till it was bright, he found it was only the edge of a scale raised by the frequent heats. But his attention was instantly arrested by seeing the bright steel change under his eye to a pale yellow, commencing at the point where the steel joined the iron, and gradually extending over it; while he looked, it changed to a darker shade, became brown, almost purple. He had now counted twelve, and quenched it. When he took the axe from the water, the same tinge was on the steel. The axe now cut better and stood well. But he had got hold of an idea he meant to follow out.
"I wonder what those colors are," he said. "Who knows but they may be the temper? Just as fast as the temper was let down they changed—grew darker. Wonder what they would have come to, if I hadn't quenched the steel. I'll know." Heating the axe once more, he rubbed it bright, and looked for the colors. For a little time the steel was white; then the pale straw color appeared again, growing darker, till it became brown, with purple spots, then purple, light blue, pigeon blue; then darker, almost black.
"O, father, what handsome colors!"
No reply. Much excited, he quenched the steel, and determined to ascertain whether the colors represented different degrees of hardness. When he found, by careful experiment, they did, he caught the wondering boy in his arms, ran into the house crying,—
"Now, my boy, we've got something that's a better regulator than David Montague's watch, your mother's candle, or counting, either."
Entering the house he shouted,—
"Sue, I've got it! I've found how the blacksmith's do it, or, if I haven't, I've found a way just as good."