mbrasures, a door bound with flowering, wrought hinges faced the road,
and a narrow flight of stairs, with a polished rail and white post, led
above. Mrs. Heydrick, a large woman in a capacious Holland apron and
worsted shoes, moved about the table with steaming pewter trenchards
while Heydrick and their guests dined.

Howat Penny's face burned as if from a violent fever; his veins, it
seemed, were channels through which ran burning wine. He was deafened by
the tumult within him. Heydrick's voice sounded flat and blurred. They
were conscious at Shadrach of the thin quality of the last metal. The
charge had been poorly made up; he, Heydrick, had said at once, when the
cinders had come out black, that the lime had been short. His words fled
through Howat's brain like racing birds; the latter's motions were
unsteady, inexact.

The clouds had now widened in a sagging plain across the sky, some
scattered rain pattered coldly on the fallen leaves. It was pleasant
before the hickory burning in the deep fireplace; the Heydricks had
taken for granted that they would wait there for Thomas Gilkan, and they
protested when Howat and Ludowika moved toward the door. But Howat was
restless beyond any possibility of patiently hearing Mrs. Heydrick's
cheerful, trivial talk. He was so clumsy with Ludowika's cloak that she
took it from him, and, with a careless, feminine scorn in common with
Mrs. Heydrick, got into it without assistance. They stood for a while in
the cast house, watching a keeper rolling and preparing the pig bed for
the evening flow. They were pressed close together in a profound gloom
of damp warmth rising from the wet sand and furnace. An obscure figure
moved a heavy and faintly clanging pile of tamping bars. The sound of
rain on the roof grew louder, continuous. A poignant and then strangling
emotion clutched at Howat Penny's throat. Silently they turned from the
murky interior.

A grey rain was plastering the leaves on the soggy ground; puddles
accumulated in the scarred road; the smoke from the smithy hung low on
the roof. At the left a small, stone house had a half opened door.
Ludowika looked within. "For storing," Howat told her. Inside were piled
sledges and cinder hooks, bars and moulds, and bales of tanned hides.
Ludowika explored in the shadows. A sudden eddy of wind slammed to the
door through which they had entered. They drew together irresistibly,
and stood for a long while, crushed in each other's arms;