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 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, deep