Myrtle and David joined them, and he left, resumed his place at the high desk in the counting house.  Strangely his energy of being communicated itself to the prosaic work before him.  It was, he suddenly felt, important for him to master the processes of Myrtle Forge; it would not do for him to remain merely irresponsible, a juvenile appendage to the Penny iron.  He would need all the position, the weight, he could assume; and money of his own.  He found a savage pleasure in recording every detail put before him.  He compared the value of pig metal, the cost of charcoal, wages, with the return of the blooms and anconies they shipped to England.  Howat experienced his father’s indignation at the manner in which London limited the Province’s industries.  For the first time he was conscious of an actual interest in the success of Myrtle Forge, a personal concern in its output.  He had always visualized it as automatically prosperous, a cause of large, inexact pride; but now it was all near to him; he considered the competition rapidly increasing here, and the jealous menace over seas.

His final trace of careless youth had gone; he felt the advent of the constant apprehension that underlies all maturity, a sense of the proximity of blind accident, evil chance, disaster.  At last he was opposed to life itself, with an immense stake to gain, to hold; in the midst of a seething, treacherous conflict arbitrarily ended by death.  There was no cringing, absolutely no cowardice, in him.  He was glad that it was all immediately about him; he was arrogant in pressing forward to take what he wanted from existence.  He forgot all premonitions, doubt was behind him; he no longer gauged the value of his desire for Ludowika Winscombe.  She was something he would, had to, have.

David Forsythe sat across the back of a chair in Howat’s room as the latter dressed in the rapidly failing light.  David had smuggled his London coat with the wired tails out to Myrtle Forge, and had the stiffened portion now spread smoothly out on either side.  His cheerful, freshly-coloured face was troubled; he seemed constantly on the point of breaking into speech without actually becoming audible.  Howat was thinking of Ludowika.  It would happen to-night, he knew.  He was at once apprehensive and glad.

“You knew,” David ventured finally, “that I’m supposed to ask Myrtle to marry me.  That is, your father and mine hoped I would.  Well,” he drew a deep breath, “I don’t think I shall.  Of course, she is one of the prettiest girls any one ever saw, and she’s quite bright—­it’s wonderful what she has picked up about the Furnace, but yet—­” his speech suddenly ran out.  With an effort Howat brought himself back from his own vastly more important concern.  “Yes?” he queried, pausing with his fingers in the buttonholes of a mulberry damask coat.  “I have decided to choose, to act, for myself,” David announced; “this is a thing where every man must be absolutely free.—­Caroline can have me if she likes.”