There are many moments of enforced idleness for the vesselmen as they stand on their raised platform in front of the crucibles; but, even during these moments of inactivity, alertness of mind is required.  One morning their minds were not alert, and one of the workmen, Abe Verity by name, seated on the railing which separates the platform from the pit in which stand the ingot-moulds, had snatched the cap from the head of one of his fellows.  The latter, in response to this, had raised his crowbar, as if he meant to strike Abe on the head, and Abe, lurching backward on the railing in order to avoid the blow, had lost his balance and fallen backwards.  Under ordinary circumstances this would have meant nothing worse than a drop into the pit below, but, as ill-luck would have it, one of the cauldrons of molten steel was being swung along the arc of the pit by a hydraulic crane, and, at the very moment when Abe lost his balance, it had reached the point beneath which he was sitting.  There was an agonised cry from the vesselmen on their platform, a hissing splash with great gouts of liquid fire flying in all directions, a sickening smell, and then, a few minutes later, a clergyman, hastily summoned from the adjoining church, was reciting the burial service over the calcined body of Abe Verity.

Blank terror gleamed in the eyes of the men who had been witnesses of this grim holocaust.  All work was suspended for the day, and Job Hesketh was led home, dazed and trembling in every joint, by his two eldest sons, who worked in another part of the forge.  Huddled together in his chair by the kitchen fire, perspiration streamed from his face.  He was in a state bordering on delirium, and the answers which he gave to the questions put to him were wildly incoherent.

Abe Verity was his friend.  They had been boys together in the little wold village where they had been born, and it was at Job’s earnest entreaty that Abe had quitted farm work and joined his friend at the Leeds Steel Works.  Their tastes had been similar, and the Veritys had often joined the Heskeths in their summer holiday at the seaside.  And now, in one fell moment, the lifelong friendship had been severed, and Abe, the glad, strong, heart-warm man, had plunged from life to death.

Job refused to go to bed that night, but sat in his chair by the flickering embers of his kitchen fire.  His wife, lying awake in the bedroom above, listened to his hard breathing and to the half-stifled words which now and again fell from his lips.  He was brooding over the terrible scene he had witnessed.  Every detail had bitten itself into his brain like acid into metal.  He saw the waves of liquid steel closing over his friend, the greedy swirl of the molten metal, and then the little tongues of red fire playing upon the surface.  They reminded him of the red tongues of wolves which he had once seen in a cage, as they licked their chops after their feed of horse-flesh.  Then it was the clergyman reading from his Prayer