by the wood shed that covered the bellows. Pointed downward the latter
spasmodically discharged a rush of air with a vast creasing of their
dusty leather. A procession of men were wheeling and dumping slag into a
dreary area beyond. There was a stir of constant life about the Furnace,
voices calling, the ringing of metal on metal, the creak of barrows,
dogs barking. The plaintive melody of a German song rose on the air.

Behind a blood red screen of sumach Howat again kissed Ludowika. Her
arms tightened about his neck; she raised her face to him with an
abandon that blinded him to the world about, and his entire being was
drawn in an agony of desire to his lips. She sank limply into his rigid
embrace, a warm sensuous burden with parted lips.

At the Heydricks he ate senselessly whatever was placed before him. The
house, solidly built of grey stone traced with iron, had two rooms on
the lower floor. The table was set before a fireplace that filled the
length of the wall, its mantel a great, roughly squared log mortared
into the stones on either side. Small windows opened through deep
embrasures, 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