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Updated: September 3, 2025
Gilkan's casual fare could not be compared to Mrs. Heydrick's inviting amplitude. Yet there was Fanny Gilkan, erect and flaming haired, who could walk as far as he could himself, and carry her father's clumsy gun all the way.
And, in consequence of that, any detestable misunderstanding must increase. He determined, with an effort unaccustomed and arduous, to ignore the other; after all Gilkan was but an insignificant mouthpiece for the familiar ineptitude of the world at large. Thomas Gilkan might continue at the Furnace without interference from him; Fanny marry her stupid labourer.
Gilkan swung a long bar against a low, clay face, and instantly the murky interior was ablaze with a crackling radiance against which the tense figures wavered in magnified silhouettes. The metal poured out of the furnace in a continuous, blinding white explosion hung with fans of sparkling gold; the channels of the pig bed rapidly filled with the fluid iron.
Thomas Gilkan, with a fitful light, was testing the sealing clay on the face of the Furnace hearth; two men were rolling out the sand for the cast over the floor of the single, high interior, and another was hammering on a wood form used for stamping the pig moulds.
Howat Penny's resentment swelled in a fiery anger at the stupidity that had driven Thomas Gilkan into making his request. A sense of humiliation contributed to an actual fury, the bitterer for the reason that he could make no satisfactory reply. Gilkan was a freedman; while he was occupying a dwelling at Shadrach Furnace it was his to conduct as he liked. Howat's face darkened the meagre fool!
Howat had seen symptoms of that last night. He would no longer complicate her existence with avenues of escape from a monotony which she patently elected. "Very well, Gilkan," he agreed shortly, choking on his wrath. He turned and tramped shortly from the interior. A sudden, lengthening sunlight bathed the open and a sullen group of charcoal burners about Dan Hesa.
No, by God, never that last again! He stood outside with his head bare and his face lifted to the cool shock of the rain. Ludowika was muffled in her cloak. Howat could see a renewed activity in the cast house; a group of men were gathered about the furnace hearth, in which he saw Thomas Gilkan. He moved forward to call the latter; but a tapping was in progress, and he was forced to wait.
His thoughts, deflected by Fanny Gilkan, left the immediate present of supper, and rested upon the fact that his his appreciation of her was becoming known at the Furnace; while Dan Hesa must be circulating it, with biting comments, among the charcoal burners.
It was the horn, calling the Furnace hands for the day; and he knew that it would continue for five minutes. Others had entered; a little group gathered about Thomas Gilkan's waning lantern. Far above them a window glimmered against the sooty wall. Howat saw that Dan Hesa was talking to Gilkan, driving in his words by a fist smiting a broad, hard palm.
Fanny Gilkan jumped lightly from bank to bank. She made her way with lithe ease through apparently unbroken tangles. It was Fanny who went ahead, who waited for Howat to follow across a fallen trunk higher than his waist. She even mocked him gaily, declared that, through his slowness, they were hopelessly losing the hunt. However, the persistent barking of the dogs contrived to draw them on.
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