Arturius looked at No. 7 dourly and shut off the motor. “Please take No. 8,” he begged High-Pockets. It was the first time he had said “please” in thirty years.

High-Pockets was staring at the proof like a man in a trance.

Suddenly he made half a dozen long strides to the machinist’s bench. He laid hands on a twelve-pound sledgehammer. He came back with it over his shoulder, and before the horrified Arturius could utter a word, High-Pockets had gone to the rear of No. 7 and swung the sledge in one devastating left-handed blow that sheared through the ninth and tenth cams. Then he stepped to the right and crashed the hammer down on the pot-pump cam.

He stepped back, breathing hard, the hammer over his shoulder. Pieces of cast iron tinkled to the floor. “Well,” boomed High-Pockets, “I guess I fixed it, didn’t I?”

There was no answer. High-Pockets looked around. Arturius had quietly fainted. The judge looked horrified.

They revived Arturius by the simple expedient of putting a screwdriver in his big hand. He opened his eyes and stared at High-Pockets and shook his head slowly, incredulously.

High-Pockets helped him up. “Don’t worry,” he said.

Arturius sputtered and almost detonated. “Don’t worry!” he snorted. “Five hundred dollars worth of cams busted up and he says, ‘Don’t worry!’ ”

“It won’t cost that much,” said High-Pockets. “I’ll help you piece the cams together. You can get them welded.”

“No,” said Arturius. “I’ll get new ones.”