“Me,” answered Nelson. “I know where the paper is. Hand it over. All right. Now here goes!”
The match lighted and Nelson quickly tucked it under the edge of the paper. There was a breathless moment and then success was assured. The paper was in flames and the splinters were crackling merrily. Nelson seized knife and wood again and frantically split off long pieces to feed the flames.
“See if you can’t find some more wood, Bob,” he said. “Here, light one of these pieces and look around.”
Armed with the small torch Bob explored.
“Fine!” he exclaimed presently from a distant corner of the shed. “Here’s a whole box. Part of it’s kind of damp, but I guess the rest will burn.”
He brought it over and knocked it to pieces and soon there was a generous fire flaring up from the old forge. Nelson seized the bellows and found that they still worked, though somewhat wheezily. “Sounds as though it had the asthma,” he said. Presently the coke caught, too, and when they could leave the fire they rummaged the place from end to end, finding enough fuel of various sorts to last them all night if necessary. A gunny sack in a corner held a few quarts of charcoal, there was a loose beam which came away readily under Bob’s persuasion, and a small box which had once held horse shoe nails was discovered under one of the windows where it had done duty as a cupboard. They took off their oilskins and wet shoes, placing the latter near the flames where they soon began to steam prodigiously.
“Wish we had something to sit on,” lamented Nelson.
“That’s easy,” Bob answered. “Here’s this old anvil over here. If we can get it to the fire it will do finely.”
After several minutes of the hardest sort of work they managed to edge it over to the forge. Then they sat down on it, very close together of necessity, and puffed and blew like a couple of porpoises.
“How long are we going to stay here?” asked Nelson, tossing another piece of wood on the flames.