va was a dark giant of a man with a beard like
those you see on the statues of Nineveh. On Sundays he parted his
beard carefully and tied the ends with little bows of scarlet ribbon;
but on week days it curled at will over his mighty chest. He had one
assistant whom he called "the Dane"; a red-haired youth as tall as
himself and straighter from the waist down. Mendarva's knees had
come together with years of poising and swinging his great hammer.

"He's little, but he'll grow," said he, after eyeing Taffy up and
down. "Dane, come fore and tell me if we'll make a workman of en."

The Dane stepped forward and passed his hands over the boy's
shoulders and down his ribs. "He's slight, but he'll fill out.
Good pair o' shoulders. Give's hold o' your hand, my son."

Taffy obeyed; not very well liking to be handled thus like a prize
bullock.

"Hand like a lady's. Tidy wrist, though. He'll do, master."

So Taffy was passed, given a leathern apron, and set to his first
task of keeping the forge-fire raked and the bellows going, while the
hammers took up the music he was to listen to for a year to come.

This music kept the day merry; and beyond the window along the
bright high-road there was usually something worth seeing--
farm-carts, jowters' carts, the doctor and his gig, pedlars and
Johnny-fortnights, the miller's waggons from the valley-bottom below
Joll's Farm, and on Tuesdays and Fridays the market-van going and
returning. Mendarva knew or speculated upon everybody, and with half
the passers-by broke off work and gave the time of day, leaning on
his hammer. But down at the farm all was strangely quiet, in spite
of the children's voices; and at night the quietness positively kept
him awake, listening to the pur-r of the pigeons in their cote
against the house-wall, thinking of his grandmother awake at home and
harkening to the _tick-tack_ of her tall clock. Often when he awoke
to the early summer daybreak and saw through his attic-window the
grey shadows of the sheep still and long on the slope above the
farmstead, his ear was wanting something, asking for something; for
the murmur of the sea never reached this inland valley. And he would
lie and long for the chirruping of the two children in the next room
and the drawing of bolts and clatter of milk-pails below stairs.

He had plenty to eat, and that plenty simple and good, and clean
linen to sleep between. The kitchen was his except on Saturday
nights