of St. Mark's at Venice, and not unlike

it in form, though stark and black. Under its open arch, without a sound, or the appearance of a hand to guide them, and with a motion that is almost ghost-like, the great anvils, with their burning freights, glide into position. A score of stalwart men, stripped to the waist, stand round with long iron rods and pincers. They push a thick black ring of apparently cold metal on to the top of the white-hot block. One man stands under a huge clock with his hand on a lever. No one speaks. There is scarcely a sound. Presently there comes slowly down as from the key-stone of the monster machine, a shining column of steel. It reaches the black ring, presses down on it, descends without a pause to the white-hot block, rests on top of it for a moment, there is a thud as of something falling into a pit beneath, and then the column rises, the arch is reopened, and the ring has disappeared, having passed through the metal and dropped to the ground below. The