Forefather looked him up and down again and said, ‘We know all about it. It was them Wesley brothers. How good is your stomach, young man? Of course, I’d leave the bar to help you, but that means I’d have to get my wife up to start on the early shift for the miners. They’ll be coming up for their breakfast soonish.’

Moist understood the unspoken request and handed the man a reasonable sum, then followed him outside where he was led along a path into the forest. This part of the forest was quite pleasant, not too dark, the kind of place where people would go for a picnic, but as they got in further, Moist could see that whatever they were going to find next, it wasn’t going to be a picnic.

In a clearing just a short walk from the pub the trees were stripped of their leaves, tangled wood was everywhere and the remains of the forge were embedded in various trunks. And there were fragments of the stricken boiler, too, some of them driven so hard into mighty oaks that Moist couldn’t pull them out. The haze in the clearing sent a chill down his spine.

He took a deep breath and said, ‘What happened to the bodies, Mister Forefather?’

‘Oh, yes, sir. I’ve got them back in my cellar, it being quite cold down there. They’re in a bucket. It isn’t a big bucket, either. It was two brothers, strapping great lads. Crucible was the brains and Jed was the blacksmith. Although in the bucket I couldn’t tell you which bits were whose. Jed was boasting about building a railway engine one day, and to tell you the truth, sir, he was a very good blacksmith, but what he knew about locomotives I wouldn’t dare think of. But he thought he could do it and all his mates were egging him on.’

He hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘I was the first one to arrive here and mostly all there was was a mist, and I didn’t like that at all. It was clammy and hot and made you want to puke. And that’s it, sir. Not much more to be said, sir.’

Moist looked up and said, ‘Should there really be an anvil up in that tree?’

The publican looked at him and then at the tree and said, ‘You’re a man with his eye on the business, aren’t you? Generally speaking, the anvil has always been on the ground, by and large, but it was a most powerful bang.’

Moist brightened up as best he could and said, ‘Thank you, Mister Forefather. Pretty soon there’ll be a lot of journalists coming to see all this and I’m sorry about that, but they turn up like flies.’

‘That’s all right, sir. Good for business. Journalists drink twice as much as anyone else and for twice as long. We had them around when the mine fell in and they really can take their liquor.’ Mr Forefather was rubbing his hands in anticipation.