“Think you could do it yourself?” broke in a heavy voice.
Billy, looking up, saw the foreman, who had been watching Billy while he watched his uncle.
“I think I know how,” answered Billy.
“If you won’t talk to the men,” said the foreman, “you may walk around the foundry until we are ready to pour.”
So Billy walked slowly around the long foundry. He saw that each man had his own pile of sand, but the piles were growing very small, because the day’s work was nearly over. The molds were being put in rows for the pouring.
He had walked nearly back to his Uncle John when he happened to step in a hollow place in the earth floor and, losing his balance, fell against a man who was carrying a mold.
With a strange, half-muttered expression the man pushed his elbow against Billy and almost threw him down.
Billy, looking up into a pair of fierce black eyes that glared at him from under a mass of coal black hair, turned so pale that William Wallace then and there called him a coward.
As fast as his feet would carry him Billy went back to Uncle John, who, still busy with his molds, said:
“Go out behind the foundry and look in at the window to see us pour.”