The clouds had now widened in a sagging plain across the sky, some scattered rain pattered coldly on the fallen leaves.  It was pleasant before the hickory burning in the deep fireplace; the Heydricks had taken for granted that they would wait there for Thomas Gilkan, and they protested when Howat and Ludowika moved toward the door.  But Howat was restless beyond any possibility of patiently hearing Mrs. Heydrick’s cheerful, trivial talk.  He was so clumsy with Ludowika’s cloak that she took it from him, and, with a careless, feminine scorn in common with Mrs. Heydrick, got into it without assistance.  They stood for a while in the cast house, watching a keeper rolling and preparing the pig bed for the evening flow.  They were pressed close together in a profound gloom of damp warmth rising from the wet sand and furnace.  An obscure figure moved a heavy and faintly clanging pile of tamping bars.  The sound of rain on the roof grew louder, continuous.  A poignant and then strangling emotion clutched at Howat Penny’s throat.  Silently they turned from the murky interior.

A grey rain was plastering the leaves on the soggy ground; puddles accumulated in the scarred road; the smoke from the smithy hung low on the roof.  At the left a small, stone house had a half opened door.  Ludowika looked within.  “For storing,” Howat told her.  Inside were piled sledges and cinder hooks, bars and moulds, and bales of tanned hides.  Ludowika explored in the shadows.  A sudden eddy of wind slammed to the door through which they had entered.  They drew together irresistibly, and stood for a long while, crushed in each other’s arms; then Ludowika stepped back with her cloak sliding from her shoulders.  She rested against precarious steps leading aloft through a square opening in the ceiling.  “For storage,” he said again.  He thought his throat had closed, and that he must suffocate.  A mechanical impulse to show her what was above set his foot upon the lower step, and he caught her waist.  “You see,” he muttered; “things for the store ... the men, wool stockings, handkerchiefs ... against their pay.”  The drumming rain was scarcely a foot above their heads; an acrid and musty odour rose from the boxes and canvas-sewed bales about the walls.  “Ludowika,” Howat said.  He stopped—­she had shut her eyes.  All that was Howat Penny, that was individually sentient, left him with a pounding rush.

A faint sound, infinitely far removed, but insistent, penetrated his blurred senses.  It grew louder; rain, rain beating on the roof.  Voices, somewhere, outside.  Ringing blows on an anvil, a blacksmith, and horses waiting.  Myrtle Forge.  Ludowika.  Ludowika Winscombe.  No, by God, never that last again!