“Was it like this one?” asked Mr. Prescott, getting up quickly and bringing him, from the library table, a great Bible, covered with light brown leather.
“That looks almost like ours,” answered Billy.
“This,” said Mr. Prescott, “is the one my mother used to read to me. There’s a great deal about iron in it,” he added, as he put it away carefully.
“To come back to Goliath,” said Mr. Prescott. “His spear had a head of iron that weighed six hundred shekels.
“Then there was that iron bedstead of Og, king of Bashan. Ever hear of him?”
“I don’t seem,” answered Billy, “to remember about him.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have remembered,” said Mr. Prescott, “if I hadn’t been so interested in iron.”
“That,” said Billy, “was probably on account of your grandfather, and your father,” he added quickly.
“There’s a great deal about iron in the Bible,” said Mr. Prescott. “Only four or five pages over in Genesis there is a verse about a man named Tubal-Cain, who was a master-worker in brass and iron.
“Then there are some things in mythology that you ought to know, now that you’re interested in iron. One of them is that the old Romans, who imagined all sorts of gods, said that iron was discovered by Vulcan. They said, too, that he forged the thunderbolts of Jupiter.