The Penny iron!  The Forge had been operated continuously since seventeen twenty-seven, hammering out the foundation of his, Jasper’s, position.  He had taken a not inconsiderable place in the succession of the men of his family; in him the Pennys had reached their greatest importance, wealth.  But after him ... what?  He was, now, the last Penny man.  The foothold Gilbert had cut out of the wild, which Howat and Casimir—­an outlandish name obviously traceable to his mother, the foreign widow—­had, in turn, increased for Daniel and Jasper, would be dissipated.  His great, great aunt, Caroline, marrying a solid Quaker, had contributed, too, to the family stamina; while her granddaughter, wedding a Jannan, had increased the social prestige and connections of the family.  The Jannans, bankers and lawyers, had already converted the greater part of their iron inheritance into more speculative finance; and the burden of the industry rested on Jasper Penny’s shoulders.

At his death the name, the long and faithful labour, the tangible monument of their endurance and rectitude, except for the tenuous, momentary fact of Eunice, would be overthrown, forgot.  He was conscious of a strong inner protest against such oblivion.  He had, of course, often before lamented the fact that he had no son; but suddenly his loss became a hundred times more poignant, regrettable.  Jasper Penny caught again the remembered, oppressive odour of foxglove, the aromatic reek of brandy and oranges; one, in its implications, as sterile as the other.  He was possessed by an overwhelming sense of essential failure, a recurrence of the dark mood that had enveloped him in leaving the Jannans’ ball.

Yet, he thought again, he was still in the midstride of his life, his powers.  His health was unimpaired; his presence bore none of the slackening aspect of increasing years.  These feelings occupied him, speeding in a single cutter sleigh over the crisp snow of the road leading from his home to Shadrach Furnace, where Graham Jannan and his young wife had been newly installed in the foremens’ dwelling.  There was a slight uneasiness about Graham’s lungs, in consequence of which he had been taken out of the banking house of an uncle, Jannan and Provost, and set at the more robust task of picking up the management of an iron furnace.

It was early afternoon; the sky was as dryly powdered with unbroken blue as was the earth with white.  The silver bells and scarlet pompons of the harness crackled in the still, intense cold; and a blanched vapour hung about the horse’s head.  Jasper Penny, enveloped in voluminous buffalo robes and fur, gazed with an increased interest at the familiar, flowing scene; nearby the forest had been cut, and suave, rolling fields stretched to a far mauve haze of trees; the ultramarine smoke of farmhouse chimneys everywhere climbed into the pale wash of sunlight; orderly fence succeeded fence.  How rapidly, and prosperous, the country was growing!  Even he could remember