It binds nobody." "It is enough for me," replied the Mask, "and my head is no cheaper than yours.

Let him who trusts me not keep away from here." And holding the girl in his arms, he carried her with him into the building while old Onucz had to dress himself from head to foot in other clothes and leave those he had brought with him outside.

He would have on his return to put on his own again and leave these others behind.
Thus smuggling was impossible.
The first room was for the smelting.
Here there was nothing to be seen of the blazing fire which illuminated the dark hollow through the windows, in one corner of the room was a simple cylinder shaped iron furnace which radiated a burning heat, on the top of which stood a round graphite crucible covered in at the top and provided with a lateral pipe.
"Here the gold is remelted after it has come out of the purifying oven," said Fatia Negra to the girl who pressed close up to him.

"Heretofore it required a whole apparatus of boilers and loads and loads of wood to bring it to smelting heat, but since I got that cylinder-stove, ten hundredweights of metal can be melted in ten minutes." "But where does the fire come from ?" enquired the girl.
"From the earth, my beloved." The girl shrank back with horror, and yet Fatia Negra did not mean hell but that furnace whose powerful bellows drove the melting heat into the double cylinder.
He looked at his watch, the moment had come.

At a single whistle a couple of workmen appeared, each of them stripped to the waist on account of the great heat; they held in their hands large iron moulds and stood facing each other opposite the crucible.