ng was inviting, at once slipping into the dusk and emerging by
reason of the warm glow within. Mrs. Heydrick, too, was an excellent
cook; there would be plenty of venison, roast partridge, okra soup.
Afterwards, under a late moon, he could go back to Myrtle Forge; or he
might stay at the Heydricks all night, and to-morrow kill such a buck as
he had lost.

The twilight darkened beneath the trees, the surrounding hills lost
their forms, in the east the distance merged into the oncoming night,
but the west was still translucent, green. There was a faint movement
in the leaves by the roadside, and a grey fox crossed, flattened on the
ground, and disappeared. Howat Penny could see the liquid gleam of its
eyes as it watched him. From the hill by the coal house came the heavy
beating of wild turkeys' wings.

He could go to Peter Heydrick's, where the venison would be excellent,
and Mrs. Heydrick was celebrated for her guinea pickle with cucumbers;
but ... the Heydricks had no daughter, and the Gilkans had. Thomas
Gilkan was only a founderman; his house had one room below and a
partition above; and Mrs. Gilkan's casual fare could not be compared to
Mrs. Heydrick's inviting amplitude. Yet there was Fanny Gilkan, erect
and flaming haired, who could walk as far as he could himself, and carry
her father's clumsy gun all the way.

His thoughts, deflected by Fanny Gilkan, left the immediate present of
supper, and rested upon the fact that his--his appreciation of her was
becoming known at the Furnace; while Dan Hesa must be circulating it,
with biting comments, among the charcoal burners. Dan Hesa, although
younger than Howat, was already contracting for charcoal, a forward
young German; and, Fanny had said with a giggle, he was paying her
serious attention. Howat Penny had lately seen a new moroseness among
the charcoal burners that could only have come from the association of
the son of Gilbert Penny and the potential owner of Myrtle Forge with
the founderman's daughter. Charcoal burners were lawless men, fugitive
in character, often escaped from terms of indenture; Dan Hesa was, he
knew, well liked by them; and the hazard created by his attraction to
Fanny Gilkan drew Howat Penny irresistibly away from the superior merits
of the Heydrick table.

That was his character: denial as a child had filled him with
slow-accumulating rage; later discipline at school had found him utterly
intractable. Something deep and instinctive with