"What's that you've got there? It looks like one of those bars that nearly smashed us."
"You've got a good eye, sir," said Bullen approvingly. "A year and a half ago you'd not have seen any difference between one bit of steel and another. But there's one thing I didn't see about it myself until Venly—he's a new man we've taken on—pointed it out to me. He came across a case of these to-day we'd thrown out in the waste-heap. We thought our machine had jarred them out of shape, because they were a fraction off size; well, so they were. But Venly he spotted them in a minute, when he was out there, and he asked me if they weren't from the Beuschoten factory—he was turned off from there last week; they're cutting down the force; they always do, come spring. He said they looked like part of a bum lot that had flaws in them. He got the magnifying-glass and showed me, and, sure enough, 'twas right he was! He says they've got piles of them they've been workin' off on the trade at a cut price. Venly he said he didn't have any stomach for a skin game like that."
"That's a pretty ruinous way to do business, isn't it?" asked Justin.
"Oh, they're going to sell out in July, so they don't care. I pity any one that's counting on any sort of machine that's got these in 'em. Would you take the glass and look for yourself, sir? Every one of 'em is flawed!"
to be continued