THE TREASURE ROOM
They took Billy to Mr. Prescott’s house in his machine.
They had to take a good many pillows and they planned to take an extra
nurse, but the young doctor said that he was going up that way, and
could just as well help.
Billy and the doctor were getting to be very good friends.
“He’s different,” Billy had confided to Uncle John, “but I like him a
lot.”
“Nice people often are different,” said Uncle John.
Billy was so much better that he had some fun, while they were putting
him into the auto, about his “stiff half,” as he called his left side.
“You just wait till I get that arm and that leg to working,” he said.
“They’ll have to work over time.”
They put him in a large room with broad windows, where he could look
down on the river and across at the mountains. There was a large brass
bed in the room, but Mr. Prescott had had a hospital bed sent up.
“You’d have hard work to find me in that bed,” said Billy to the nurse,
“wouldn’t you?”
It was a beautiful room. One of the maids told Billy that it had been
Mr. Prescott’s mother’s room, and that he had always kept it as she had
left it.
For the first week Billy feasted his eyes on color.
The walls of the room were soft brown; the paint was the color of
cream. There were two sets of curtains: one a soft old blue, and over
that another hanging of all sorts of colors. It took Billy a whole day
to pick out the pattern on those curtains.
There was a mahogany dressing table, and there was a wonderful
rug--soft shades of rose in the middle, and ever so many shades of blue
in the border.
There was a fireplace with a shining brass fender. And there were--oh,
so many things!
Then Billy spent almost another week on the pictures. But when he
wanted to rest his eyes he looked at his old friends, the mountains,
lying far across the river.
Mr. Prescott, too, liked the mountains. He came to sit by him in
the evening, and they had real friendly times together watching the
mountains fade away into the night, and seeing the electric lights
flash out, one after another, all along the river.
Finally the doctors took off the splints. They had a great time doing
it, testing his joints to see whether or not they would work.
Then Billy found that, as the young doctor said, there had been a “tall
lot of worrying done about those bones.”
This time the white-haired doctor paid more attention to his bones than
he did to Billy. He didn’t say anything till he went to put his glasses
back in the case. Then he straightened up, and said:
“I’m happy to tell you, young man, that those joints will work all
right after they get used to working again.”
The next day Billy went down the long flight of stairs, with Mr.
Prescott on one side, and the nurse on the other, to the great library,
right under the room where he had been.
“Feel pretty well, now that you’re down?” asked Mr. Prescott, after the
nurse had gone up-stairs.
“Sure, sir,” answered Billy.
“Then follow me,” said Mr. Prescott, opening a door at the end of the
library.
Billy followed, but he had hardly stepped in before he stepped back.
“Why, Billy,” said Mr. Prescott, coming quickly back to him, “I didn’t
mean to frighten you. We’ll stay in the library.”
Now the doctor had told Mr. Prescott that Billy mustn’t be frightened
by anything if they could help it, for he’d been through about all a
boy’s nerves could stand. So Mr. Prescott drew Billy over to the big
sofa, fixed some pillows around him, and put a foot-rest under his leg.
Then Mr. Prescott settled himself in a great chair as though he had
nothing in the world to do except to talk to Billy.
“That,” said Mr. Prescott, “is my treasure room. When I go in there, I
think of brave men, and of how they helped the world along. What made
you step back?”
“Because,” answered Billy, half ashamed, “I thought I saw a man in the
corner pointing something at me.”
“I ought,” said Mr. Prescott, “to have thought of that before I took
you into the room.
“I’ve been trying, for some time, to make that old suit of armor and
that spear look like a knight standing there, ready for action. I must
have, at last, succeeded, but I’m sorry that it startled you.
“You see I’m naturally interested in weapons of war because they are
all made of steel or iron.”
“Battle-ships, too,” said Billy.
“Yes,” said Mr. Prescott. “But you mustn’t forget the great naval
battles that were won with ships of wood.
“There’s one thing in that room,” Mr. Prescott went on, “that I am sure
you will like to see. It is my great-great-grandfather’s musket.”
“Oh,” said Billy, “I didn’t know that you had a
great-great-grandfather.”
“I did,” said Mr. Prescott, just as quietly as if Billy had been
talking sense. “He was a brave man, too. That is the musket that he had
when he was with General Washington at Valley Forge.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Billy again.
“Know about Valley Forge, do you?”
“A little,” answered Billy, very humbly.
“That’s enough to start on,” said Mr. Prescott.
Billy could almost imagine that Uncle John was talking. Billy spent a
great deal more time every day than anybody realized in thinking about
his Uncle John.
“Perhaps you don’t know, many people don’t,” said Mr. Prescott, “that
the first name of that place was Valley Creek. It was changed to Valley
Forge because a large forge plant was established there. It was one of
the first places in this state where they made iron and steel.
“By the way, George Washington’s father was a maker of pig iron down in
Virginia.”
“Oh!” said Billy. “There seem to be a lot of things to know about iron.”
“There’s really no end to them,” said Mr. Prescott. “They begin way
back in history. Did you ever read about Goliath the giant?”
“My father used to read those stories to me,” answered Billy, “out of a
great big Bible.”
“Was it like this one?” asked Mr. Prescott, getting up quickly and
bringing him, from the library table, a great Bible, covered with light
brown leather.
“That looks almost like ours,” answered Billy.
“This,” said Mr. Prescott, “is the one my mother used to read to me.
There’s a great deal about iron in it,” he added, as he put it away
carefully.
“To come back to Goliath,” said Mr. Prescott. “His spear had a head of
iron that weighed six hundred shekels.
“Then there was that iron bedstead of Og, king of Bashan. Ever hear of
him?”
“I don’t seem,” answered Billy, “to remember about him.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have remembered,” said Mr. Prescott, “if I hadn’t
been so interested in iron.”
“That,” said Billy, “was probably on account of your grandfather, and
your father,” he added quickly.
“There’s a great deal about iron in the Bible,” said Mr. Prescott.
“Only four or five pages over in Genesis there is a verse about a man
named Tubal-Cain, who was a master-worker in brass and iron.
“Then there are some things in mythology that you ought to know, now
that you’re interested in iron. One of them is that the old Romans, who
imagined all sorts of gods, said that iron was discovered by Vulcan.
They said, too, that he forged the thunderbolts of Jupiter.
“Now, then, Billy, how about my treasure room?”
“Ready, sir,” answered Billy, working himself out from among his
pillows.
“Once,” said Mr. Prescott, walking close by Billy, “I went into a room
something like this, only it had many more things in it. The room was
in Sir Walter Scott’s house. He had one of Napoleon’s pistols from
Waterloo.
“He called his room an armory. I generally call mine my ‘treasure
room.’”
“I think I like armory better,” said Billy.
“Then,” said Mr. Prescott, “will you walk into my armory?”
“First of all,” said Billy, “I want to see that gun--musket.”
“Here it is,” said Mr. Prescott. “There,” he added, pointing to a
picture in an oval brass frame, “is my great-great-grandfather.”
“Oh!” said Billy.
Then Mr. Prescott knew that Billy had never before seen a silhouette.
“That kind of picture,” he said, “does make a man look as black as his
own hat, though it is often a good profile. I used to make them myself.
Some night I’ll make one of you.
“Now that you’ve seen the musket, I think that you had better take a
look at this suit of armor that I have been trying to make stand up
here like a knight.
“This coat of mail is made of links, you see. Sometimes they were made
of scales of iron linked together.
“The work that those old smiths did is really wonderful, especially
when you remember that their only tools were hammer, pincers, chisel,
and tongs. It took both time and patience to weld every one of those
links together.”
“I don’t think I understand what weld means,” said Billy.
“When iron is heated to a white heat,” said Mr. Prescott, “it can be
hammered together into one piece. Most metals have to be soldered, you
know. The blacksmiths generally use a powder that will make the iron
weld more easily, because it makes the iron soften more quickly, but
iron is its own solder.
“You’d better sit down here while I explain a little about this suit of
armor; then you’ll know what you’re reading about when you come to a
knight.
“I suppose that every boy knows what a helmet and a vizor are; they
learn about that from seeing firemen.”
“And policemen,” said Billy.
“Only the helmets of the knights covered their faces and ended in
guards for their necks. I dare say that you don’t know what a gorget
is.”
“No,” said Billy, “I don’t.”
“That is the piece of armor that protected the throat. Here is the
cuirass or breast-plate, and the tassets that covered the thighs.
They’re hooked to the cuirass. And here are the greaves for the shins.
There are names for all the arm pieces, too, but we’ll let those go
just now.
“This shield, you see, is wood covered with iron, and part of the
handle inside is wood. A man must have weighed a great deal when he had
a full suit of armor on, and he must have been splendid to look at and
rather hard to kill.
“Those old smiths certainly made a fine art of their work in iron. They
got plenty of credit for it, too. In the Anglo-Saxon times they were
really treated as officers of rank.
“When a man was depending on his sword to protect his family, he
naturally respected a man who could make good swords. The smiths sort
of held society together.”
Billy, looking around the room, saw that one side had spears and
shields and helmets hung all over it; and on the wall at the end were
pistols, bows and arrows, and some dreadful knives.
“Did all those,” he asked, pointing at the end of the room, “kill
somebody?”
“Ask it the other way,” said Mr. Prescott; “did they all protect
somebody? Then I can safely say that they did, for any foe would think
twice before he attacked a man in mail. These things were all made
because they were needed.”
“What do you suppose put the armorers out of business?”
“I don’t know,” answered Billy.
“Gunpowder,” said Mr. Prescott. “A man could be blown up, armor and
all.”
“Then they had to make guns,” said Billy.
“And they’ve been at that ever since,” said Mr. Prescott.
“Come over to this cabinet, and I’ll show you my special treasure.
“Shut your eyes, Billy, and think of walls in a desert long enough and
high enough to shut in a whole city.”
Billy shut his eyes. “I see the walls,” he said.
“Now, just inside the wall, think a garden with great beds of roses.”
“Blush roses?” queried Billy.
“Damask,” replied Mr. Prescott; “pink, pretty good size.”
“That’s done!” said Billy.
“Now, in that garden, think an Arab chief, a sheik, mounted on a
beautiful Arabian horse, and--open your eyes!”
“Here is his sword!”
“I saw him clearly!” exclaimed Billy, his eyes flying wide open.
[Illustration: “HERE IS HIS SWORD”]
“My!” he said, “but that’s a beauty!”
“It is,” said Mr. Prescott. “Look!”
Then he took the hilt in his right hand and the point in his left, and
began to bend the point toward the hilt.
“Don’t,” cried Billy. “You’ll break it!”
“The tip and the hilt of the best of the old swords were supposed to
come together,” said Mr. Prescott.
“See, this has an inscription in Arabic.”
“I have a genuine Toledo, too, but you’ve been in here long enough.
Let’s go back into the library. You may come in here whenever you like.
Mornings, I think, would be the best time.”
When Billy was comfortably settled among his pillows, with the Damascus
sword on the sofa by him, Mr. Prescott said:
“Men, in the olden time, thought so much of their swords that they
often named them, and had them baptized by the priest. The great
emperor Charlemagne had a sword named ‘Joyeuse.’
“Sometimes, too, the old bards sang about swords and their makers.”
“Tell me,” said Billy, “how they made swords.”
“The people way over in the East understood the process of converting
iron into steel, but in those days they had plenty of gold and very
little steel, so swords were sometimes made of gold with only an edge
of steel.
“The steel swords were made by hammering little piles of steel plates
together. They were heated, hammered, and doubled over, end to end,
until the layers of steel in a single sword ran up into the millions.
“Now, we’ll come back to the present time, and I’ll show you something
that I brought home yesterday to put in my treasure room.”
Billy watched eagerly, while Mr. Prescott took a package from the
library table, and opened it.
Then, in delight, he exclaimed:
“The great iron key!”
“The same,” said Mr. Prescott, “and glad enough I am to have it here.
“When I gave Tom the new key, he didn’t look altogether happy. I think
the fellow really has enjoyed having the care of this one.”
“I suppose,” said Billy, “that the new one is so small that he will be
afraid of losing it. They don’t make such large keys nowadays.”
“That statement may be true in general,” said Mr. Prescott, “but the
fact is that the new key is as large as this.”
Then Mr. Prescott stopped talking, but he looked right at Billy.
“You don’t mean,” said Billy, after thinking for a minute as hard as he
could, “that you have had a key made, do you?”
“That is the meaning that I intended to convey,” answered Mr. Prescott.
“But I’m not going to tease a fellow that is down-stairs for the first
time, so I’ll tell you, right away, that Mr. John Bradford made the
casting for the new key, and he used this for a pattern.”
“Oh!” said Billy, smiling.
“You didn’t like it very well, did you, Billy,” asked Mr. Prescott,
“when I put that key back in the door?”
“No,” answered Billy, “I didn’t.”
“Just at that time,” said Mr. Prescott, “a great many things had to be
considered. I decided that it was better to risk the key than to risk
letting the man know that we knew what had happened.
“You never knew either, did you, how many nights after that I spent in
the office?”
“Honest?” asked Billy, opening his eyes very wide.
“Running a mill, I’d have you understand, Billy Bradford,” said Mr.
Prescott, “is no easy job.”
“It doesn’t seem to be,” said Billy, just as earnestly as if he had
been a man.
“I must go,” said Mr. Prescott. “I had almost forgotten that I am one
of the modern workers in iron.
“Billy,” he said suddenly, turning as he reached the door, “did you
ever know anybody by the name of Smith?”
Billy’s answer was a merry laugh.
“You needn’t laugh, Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott. “If you do,
perhaps I won’t tell you something.”
“Do,” said Billy.
“People,” said Mr. Prescott, coming part way back into the room,
“didn’t always have last names. When they came into fashion, all the
workers on anvils were given Smith for a last name. That’s where the
Smiths came from!”
“Honest?” asked Billy.
“Fact,” said Mr. Prescott, as he went through the door.
When the nurse came down a little later, she found Billy fast asleep
among the cushions, and his hand was lying on the hilt of the Damascus
blade.
[Illustration]