Mr. Threader reached into his coat-pocket. "To own this thing is a death-warrant," he said, "but you already have mine in your hip pocket, it seems, and so this is redundant." And he took out a cylinder of clay, a bit larger in diameter than a guinea coin, and as long as a finger. In the middle it had been broken or chopped into two halves that had been rejoined with slip and fired to make the thing whole. He lay this on its side on the workbench and then rolled it until a tapered hole, like a tiny funnel, came round to the top. Then he chocked it between a pair of fire-bricks. "Be my guest," he offered, "but this is hardly the way to forge a proper guinea!"