he
flickering embers of his kitchen fire. His wife, lying awake in the
bedroom above, listened to his hard breathing and to the half-stifled
words which now and again fell from his lips. He was brooding over the
terrible scene he had witnessed. Every detail had bitten itself into his
brain like acid into metal. He saw the waves of liquid steel closing
over his friend, the greedy swirl of the molten metal, and then the
little tongues of red fire playing upon the surface. They reminded him
of the red tongues of wolves which he had once seen in a cage, as they
licked their chops after their feed of horse-flesh. Then it was the
clergyman reading from his Prayer Book in the garish light of the forge
that fastened itself on his mind. The words seemed charged with bitter
mockery: "We give Thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased Thee to
deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world."
"Hearty thanks"! he muttered scornfully. "I'll gie God nowt o' t' sort.
Life tasted gooid to Abe. He knew nowt about t' miseries o' t' sinful
world. He led a clean life, did Abe; an' he were fain o' life, same as I
am."

Time gradually assuaged the first horror of the tragedy which Job had
witnessed, but it failed to bring him peace of mind. Fear of death,
which up to the moment of the tragedy at the forge had never given him
an uneasy moment, now entered into possession of his mind and haunted
him awake or asleep. His work at the forge, once a joy to him, was now
an unbroken agony. He saw death lying in wait for him every time he
climbed a ladder or lifted a crowbar. Nor could he wholly escape from
the terror in what had always seemed to him the security of his home.
The howling of the wind in the chimney, the muttering of a distant
thunderstorm, even the sight of his razor on the dressing-table, were
enough to arouse the morbid fear and strike terror to his heart.

He said little of the agony that he suffered, but it was written plainly
in his eyes, in his ashen face and in the trembling of his hand. I did
my best to induce him to speak his mind to me, but with poor success.
One Sunday evening, however, when I found him and his wife seated by
themselves over the fire, I found him more communicative, and I realised
that what he dreaded most of all in the thought of death was loss of
personality. Of the unelect Calvinist's fear of hell he knew nothing.
What troubled him was, rather, dissatisfaction with heaven. Job was not