Mendarva’s forge stood on a triangle of turf beside the high-road, where a cart-track branched off to descend to Joll’s Farm in the valley.  And Mendarva was a dark giant of a man with a beard like those you see on the statues of Nineveh.  On Sundays he parted his beard carefully and tied the ends with little bows of scarlet ribbon; but on week days it curled at will over his mighty chest.  He had one assistant whom he called “the Dane”; a red-haired youth as tall as himself and straighter from the waist down.  Mendarva’s knees had come together with years of poising and swinging his great hammer.

“He’s little, but he’ll grow,” said he, after eyeing Taffy up and down.  “Dane, come fore and tell me if we’ll make a workman of en.”

The Dane stepped forward and passed his hands over the boy’s shoulders and down his ribs.  “He’s slight, but he’ll fill out.  Good pair o’ shoulders.  Give’s hold o’ your hand, my son.”

Taffy obeyed; not very well liking to be handled thus like a prize bullock.

“Hand like a lady’s.  Tidy wrist, though.  He’ll do, master.”

So Taffy was passed, given a leathern apron, and set to his first task of keeping the forge-fire raked and the bellows going, while the hammers took up the music he was to listen to for a year to come.

This music kept the day merry; and beyond the window along the bright high-road there was usually something worth seeing—­ farm-carts, jowters’ carts, the doctor and his gig, pedlars and Johnny-fortnights, the miller’s waggons from the valley-bottom below Joll’s Farm, and on Tuesdays and Fridays the market-van going and returning.  Mendarva knew or speculated upon everybody, and with half the passers-by broke off work and gave the time of day, leaning on his hammer.  But down at the farm all was strangely quiet, in spite of the children’s voices; and at night the quietness positively kept him awake, listening to the pur-r of the pigeons in their cote against the house-wall, thinking of his grandmother awake at home and harkening to the tick-tack of her tall clock.  Often when he awoke to the early summer daybreak and saw through his attic-window the grey shadows of the sheep still and long on the slope above the farmstead, his ear was wanting something, asking for something; for the murmur of the sea never reached this inland valley.  And he would lie and long for the chirruping of the two children in the next room and the drawing of bolts and clatter of milk-pails below stairs.

He had plenty to eat, and that plenty simple and good, and clean linen to sleep between.  The kitchen was his except on Saturday nights, when Mrs. Joll and Lizzie tubbed the children there, and then he would carry his books off to the best parlour or stroll around the farm with Mr. Joll and discuss the stock.  There were no loose rails in Mr. Joll’s gates, no farm implements lying out in the weather to rust.  Mr. Joll worked early and late, and his shoulders had a tell-tale stoop—­for he was a man in the prime of life, perhaps some five years older than his wife.