Excerpt from The House of Iron Men Vail, recovering promptly from his state of sur prise and incredulity, smiled in his cheeriest manner. His friends had prepared an elaborate hoax, per haps a mechanical toy, he thought, by way of a birthday joke. But Iris was first to speak. Well! If I ever! She exclaimed. What in the world can it be? Vail thrust his hand in his pocket, as they stood there looking at the box. It's probably a railroad - a lot of toy cars, loco motives, track, and all the rest. For half a cent I'd let it stand unopened and wait for the sender to give himself away by asking fool questions about it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.