wide reaches of wild that were now cultivated.  The game, quail and wild turkey and deer, was fast disappearing.  The country was growing amazingly, too, extending through the Louisiana Purchase, State by State, to Mexico and the Texan border.  The era of the greatness of the United States had hardly begun, while it was more than probable that the greatness, the power, of the Penny family faced an imminent destruction.  His revolt at this, joining the more personal sense of the emptiness of his existence, filled him with a bitter energy, a determination to conquer, somehow, the obdurate facts hemming him in.

The sleigh dropped over a rise into a shallow fold of hills, with a collection of structures on a slope, and a number of solid, small grey stone dwellings.  He glanced subconsciously at the stack of Shadrach Furnace, and saw that it was in blast—­a colourless, lively flame, with a thin, white smoke like crumpled muslin, playing about its base.  The metallic ring of a smithy rose at a crossing of roads, and, from the cast house, drifted the refrain of a German song.  He turned in by the comparatively long, low facade of the house where the Jannans were living.

A negro led the horse and sleigh back to a stable; and, briskly sounding the polished iron doorknocker, he let himself into the dining room, a chamber with a wide, pot-hung fireplace and plain mahogany consul tables with wood chairs brightly painted with archaic flowers and scrolls in gold.  Standing at the far side of the room, delicately outlined against a low, deeply embrasured window, was Susan Brundon.

A slow tide of colour rose to her ordinarily pale cheeks, corresponding with a formless gladness permeating his own being.  She wore ruffled lavender with a clear lace pelerine caught at her breast by a knot of straw-coloured ribbon and sprig of rose geranium.  “Mr. Penny,” she said, with a little gasp of surprise; but her gaze was unwavering, candid.

“Why not?” he replied lightly.  “I have a small interest in Shadrach.  You are surprising—­so far from that absorbing Academy.”

“It’s my eyes again,” she explained.  “I am obliged to rest.  There is a very good assistant at the school; and Mary sweetly thought the country would do me good.”

“It is really miraculous,” Mary Jannan stated, entering from the kitchen; “she’ll almost never.  Weren’t we lucky?” She was a small woman with smooth brown hair and an air of quiet capability.  “And it’s splendid to see you,” she continued to Jasper Penny.  “Don’t for a minute think you’ll get off before to-morrow, perhaps not then.  Graham is out, chop-chopping wood.  Actually—­the suave Graham.”  She indicated a high row of pegs for Jasper Penny’s furs.  “Everything is terribly primitive.  Most of the furniture was so sound that we couldn’t bring ourselves to discard it all, however old-fashioned.  Little by little.”  Graham Jannan entered, a tall, thin young man with crisp, pale yellow hair and a clean shaven, sanguine countenance with challenging light blue eyes.  He greeted the older man with a firm, cold hand clasp.  “I suppose you’ve come out to discover what I have learned about iron.  Well, I know now that a sow is not necessarily a lady, and that some blooms have no bouquet.  Good rum has, though, after sleighing.”