wood-soled shoes were drying. The rough slab of the table, pushed back
against a long seat made of a partly hewed and pegged log, was empty
but for some dull scarred pewter and scraps of salt meat. On the narrow
stair that led above, a small, touselled form was sleeping--one of the
cast boys at the Furnace.

A thin, peering woman in a hickory-dyed wool dress moved forward
obsequiously. "Mr. Penny!" she echoed the girl's announcement; "and here
I haven't got a thing fit for you. Thomas Gilkan has been too busy to
get out, and Fanny she'll fetch nothing unless the mood's on her. If I
only had a fish I could turn over." She brushed the end of the table
with a frayed sleeve. "You might just take a seat, and I'll look
around."

Fanny Gilkan listened to her mother with a comprehending smile. Fanny's
face was gaunt, but her grey eyes were wide and compelling, her mouth
was firm and bright; and her hair, her father often said, resembled the
fire at the top of Shadrach. Howat knew that she was as impersonal, as
essentially unstirred, as himself; but he had a clear doubt of Mrs.
Gilkan. The latter was too anxious to welcome him to their unpretending
home; she obviously moved to throw Fanny and himself together, and to
disparage such suits as honest Dan Hesa's. He wondered if the older
woman thought he might marry her daughter. And wondering he came to the
conclusion that the other thing would please the mother almost as well.
She had given him to understand that at Fanny's age she would know how
to please any Mr. Howat Penny that chance fortune might bring her.

That some such worldly advice had been poured into Fanny's ears he
could not doubt; and he admired the girl's obvious scorn of such wiles
and surrenders. She sat frankly beside him now, as he finished a