He moved forward to
call the latter; but a tapping was in progress, and he was forced to
wait. 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.
Finally Howat Penny lifted Ludowika to her saddle and swung himself up
at her side. The rain had stopped; below the eastern rim of cloud an
expanse showed serenely clear. Their horses soberly took the rise beyond
Shadrach Furnace and merged into the gathering dusk of the forest road.
A deep tranquillity had succeeded the tempest of Howat's emotions; it
would not continue, he knew; already the pressure of immense, new
difficulties gathered about him; but momentarily he ignored them. He
searched his feelings curiously.
The fact that struck him most sharply was that he was utterly without
remorse for what had occurred; it had been inevitable. He experienced
none of the fears against which Ludowika had exclaimed. He lingered over
no self-accusations, the reproach of adultery.
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