A spineless and worthless faith, the boy soon concluded. He would have none of it. The man he wanted to imitate was strong-minded Archer, who lived in a fine mansion on the hillside above the river and the furnace he owned.

Hadn't old Giles told Joseph that he had the wits and the will to achieve that kind of success? Hadn't he said it often lately?

Joseph believed Giles much of the time. He believed him until he looked at the charcoal dust under his own nails and listened to the other apprentices mocking him with cries of "Dirty Joe, black as an African."

Then he would see his dreams as pretense and laugh at his own stupidity until his pale eyes filled with shameful but unstoppable tears.

Old Giles Hazard, a bachelor, was one of the three most important men at the Archer ironworks. He was in charge of the finery, the charcoal forge in which cast-iron pigs from the furnace were re-melted to drive off an excess of carbon and other elements which made cast iron too brittle for products such as horseshoes, wheel rims, and plow points. Giles Hazard had a gruff voice and a bent for working his men and apprentices like slaves. He had lived within a ten-minute walk of the furnace all his life and had gone to work there at age nine.

He was a short, portly fellow, possessed of immense energy despite his weight. Physically, he might have been a much older version of Joseph. Perhaps that was one reason he treated the boy almost like a son.

Another reason was that Joseph learned quickly. Joseph had come to Giles's attention last summer, about the time he was beginning his second year at Archer's.