“Oh, that’s what you think, is it, lad?”
“Yes,” I said, seating myself on the bench and stroking the kitten. “A blacksmith always seems to me to be a bold manly straightforward man, who would fight his enemy fairly face to face, and not go in the dark and stab him.”
“Ah!” he said; “but I arn’t a blacksmith, I’m a white-smith, and work in steel.”
“It’s much the same,” I said thoughtfully; and then, looking him full in the face: “No, Pannell, I don’t think you cut the bands, but I feel pretty sure you know who did.”
The man’s jaw dropped, and he looked quite paralysed for a moment or two. Then half recovering himself he plunged his tongs into the fire, pulled out a sputtering white piece of glowing steel, gave it his regular whirl through the air like a firework, and, instead of banging it on to the anvil, plunged it with a fierce toss into the iron water-trough, and quenched it.
“Why, Pannell!” I cried, “what made you do that?”
He scratched his head with the hand that held the hammer, and stared at me for a few moments, and then down at the black steel that he had taken dripping from the trough.
“Dunno,” he said hoarsely, “dunno, lad.”
“I do,” I said to myself as I set down the kitten and went back to join my uncles, who were in consultation in the office.
They stopped short as I entered, and Uncle Bob turned to me. “Well, Philosopher Cob,” he said, “what do you say? Who did this cowardly act—was it someone in the neighbourhood, or one of our own men?”