They strolled out to the works, and then tea was to come out after them, the weather being warm and soft.

Close to the works they found a foreman of engineers smoking his pipe, and interrogated him.

He showed them a rising wall, five hundred feet wide at the base, and told them it was to be ninety feet high, narrowing, gradually, to a summit twelve feet broad.

As the whole embankment was to be twelve hundred feet long at the top, this gave some idea of the bulk of the materials to be used: those materials were clay, shale, mill-stone, and sandstone of looser texture.

The engineer knew Grotait, and brought him a drawing of the mighty cone to be erected.