Wolfe, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent
over the furnace with his iron pole, unconscious of her
scrutiny, only stopping to receive orders. Physically, Nature
had promised the man but little. He had already lost the
strength and instinct vigor of a man, his muscles were thin, his
nerves weak, his face ( a meek, woman's face) haggard, yellow
with consumption. In the mill he was known as one of the girl-
men: "Molly Wolfe" was his sobriquet. He was never seen in the
cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did,
desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed,
pommelled to a jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood
was up: but he was no favorite in the mill; he had the taint of
school-learning on him,--not to a dangerous extent, only a
quarter or so in the free-school in fact, but enough to ruin him
as a good hand in a fight.

For other reasons, too, he was not popular. Not one of
themselves, they felt that, though outwardly as filthy and ash-
covered; silent, with foreign thoughts and longings breaking out
through his quietness in innumerable curious ways: this one,
for instance. In the neighboring furnace-buildings lay great
heaps of the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run.
Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of a delicate,
waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl,
Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of
chipping and moulding figures,--hideous, fantastic enough, but
sometimes strangely beautiful: even the mill-men saw that,
while they jeered at him. It was a curious fancy in the man,
almost a passion. The few hours for rest he spent hewing and