Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/238

 *ings, stood at the edge of a waterfall. High chimneys sent forth dark clouds of smoke, blasting furnaces were in full blaze, and light shone from all the windows and apertures. Within, hammers and rolling mills were going with such force that the air rang with their clatter and boom. Just beyond the workshops were long rows of workingmen's homes, pretty villas, schoolhouses, assembly halls, and shops. But there all was quiet and apparently everybody was asleep. The boy did not glance in that direction, but gazed intently at the iron works. The earth around them was black; the sky above them was like a great fiery dome; the rapids, white with foam, rushed by; while the buildings themselves were sending out light and smoke, fire and sparks. It was the grandest sight the boy had ever seen.

"Surely you don't mean to say you can set fire to a place like that?" remarked the bear doubtingly.

The boy, wedged between the beast's paws, was thinking the only thing that might save him would be that the bear should have a high opinion of his capability and power.

"It's all the same to me," he answered