property, and her manner of identifying it by the ornaments. He
liked an attempt to baffle him; he was accustomed to it; it gave
some exercise to his wits and his shrewdness. There would be no fun
in fox-hunting, if Reynard yielded himself up without any effort to
escape. Then, again, his mother's milk was yet in him, policeman,
officer of the Detective Service though he was; and he felt sorry
for the old woman, whose "softness" had given such material
assistance in identifying her son as the murderer. However, he
conveyed the gun, and the intelligence he had gained, to the
superintendent; and the result was, that, in a short time
afterwards, three policemen went to the works at which Jem was
foreman, and announced their errand to the astonished overseer, who
directed them to the part of the foundry where Jem was then
superintending a casting.

Dark, black were the walls, the ground, the faces around them, as
they crossed the yard. But, in the furnace-house, a deep and lurid
red glared over all; the furnace roared with mighty flame. The men,
like demons, in their fire-and-soot colouring, stood swart around,
awaiting the moment when the tons of solid iron should have melted
down into fiery liquid, fit to be poured, with still, heavy sound,
into the delicate moulding of fine black sand, prepared to receive
it. The heat was intense, and the red glare grew every instant more
fierce; the policemen stood awed with the novel sight. Then, black
figures, holding strange-shaped bucket-shovels, came athwart the
deep-red furnace light, and clear and brilliant flowed forth the
iron into the appropriate mould. The buzz of voices rose again;
there was time to speak, and gasp, and wipe the brows; and then one
by one, the men dispersed to some other branch of their employment.