Without definite purpose they turned from the public way into an
overgrown path, banked with matted blackberry bushes, and were soon
facing the remains of the Furnace. It had been solidly constructed of
unmasoned stone, bound by iron rods, and its bulk was largely unaffected
by time. The hearth had fallen in, choked by luxuriant greenery; but the
blank sides mounted to meet the walled path reaching out to its top from
the abrupt hill against which it had been placed. Before it foundations
could still be traced; and above, a rectangle of windowless stone walls
survived, roofless and desolate. An abandoned road turned up the hill,
and they followed it to where they could gaze into the upper ruin and
the Furnace top below. Everywhere nature had marked or twisted aside cut
stone and wood with its living greenery. Farther down a pathlike level
followed the side of the hill, ending abruptly in a walled fall, and a
confusion of broken beams, iron braces, and section of a large,
wheel-like circumference. Out beyond were other crumbling remains of old
activity--a stone span across the dried course of a water way, and a
wide bank, showing through a hardy vegetation the grey-brown
inequalities of slag.
The stillness, broken only by the querulous melody of a robin, and a
beginning, faint piping of frogs, was amazingly profound after the
roaring energy of the Medial Works.
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