“Oh yes,” cried Tom eagerly; “I’d forgotten.”
“Well,” said Uncle Richard, “the oxide of iron is Nature’s action upon the iron. Man produces iron by heat from the ore, but unless great care is used to protect it from the action of the atmosphere, it is always going back to a state of nature—oxidises, or goes back into a salt of iron. That by the way; I am not dealing with a salt of iron but with a salt of silver. There it is, so many grains of a salt of silver, which looked like sugar-candy when I wetted it in the water, and, as you see now, here it is a perfectly colourless fluid. There, I have nearly done talking.”
“More applause, Tom,” said the Vicar merrily.
“Come, that’s hardly fair,” retorted Uncle Richard. “What would you say to us if we applauded when you said one of your sermons was nearly at an end?”
“But we did not applaud the announcement that you had nearly done,” said the Vicar, “but the fact that the experiment was nearly at hand.”
“Yes; that’s it, uncle. Go on, please,” cried Tom.
“Very well then: my experimental magic trick is this,” continued Uncle Richard. “I am about not to change a metal into a salt, but a salt—that salt in solution in the water—back into a metal—the invisible into the visible—the colourless water into brilliant, flashing, metallic silver.”
“The cannon-ball changed from one hat to the other is nothing to that, Tom Blount,” said the Vicar; “but we are the audience; let’s be sceptical. I’ll say it isn’t to be done.”
“Oh yes,” said Tom seriously. “If uncle says he’ll do it, he will.”
“Well done, boy,” said the Vicar, clapping the lad on the back. “I wish my parishioners would all have as much faith in my words as you have in your uncle’s. But silence in the audience. The lecturer will now proceed with the experiment.”