Page:Our Girls.pdf/47

 weapon may be her own brother or sweetheart.

The next factory we call at is engaged in the making of shot. It lies far out in the fields, and as we turn down the lane that leads to it we pass an obelisk to the memory of Warwick, the King-maker, who fought his last battle there and was slain. The earth around sleeps full of the dead who died with him that day, and over yonder, behind fires that burn through the darkness like blood-shot eyes, some of their daughters, down many centuries, are making deadlier weapons of war than Warwick's men ever knew.

It is practically an open-air industry, for the doors of the tent are thrown wide, the heat being great within. In long rows of vats that are like huge kitchen coppers, women are boiling lead and pouring it into the shot-moulds. They are older and, perhaps, coarser women who engage in this labour, and as you approach the tents, and see the scaly grey liquid ladled out, you find it impossible not to