“What's been the trouble with Tubal Cain? Other forges appear to flourish about here. This Wooddrop seems to have built a big thing with iron.”
“Mammon!” Claypole stated. “Slag; dross! Not this, but the Eternal World.” The other failed to comprehend, and he said so irritably. “All that,” Claypole specified, waving toward the forge, “takes the thoughts from the Supreme Being. Eager for the Word, and a poor speller-out of the Book, you can't spend priceless hours shingling blooms. And then the men left, one after another, because I stopped pandering to their carnal appetites. No one can indulge in rum here, in a place of mine sealed to God.”
“Do you mean that whisky was a part of their pay and that you held it back?” Alexander Hulings demanded curtly. He was without the faintest sympathy for what he termed such arrant folly.
“Yes, just that; a brawling, froward crew. Wooddrop wanted to buy, but I wouldn't extend his wicked dominion, satisfy fleshly lust.”
“It's a good forge, then?”
“None better! I built her mostly myself, when I was laying up the treasure that rusted; stone on stone, log on log. Heavy, slow work. The sluice is like a city wall; the anvil bedded on seven feet of oak. It's right! But if I'd known then I should have put up a temple to Jehovah.”
Hulings could scarcely contain his impatience.
“Why,” he ejaculated, “you might have made a fine thing out of it! Opportunity, opportunity, and you let it go by. For sheer——”
He broke off at a steady gaze from Claypole's calm blue eyes. It was evident that he would have to restrain any injudicious characterizations of the other's belief. He spoke suddenly:
“I came up here because I was sick and had to get out of Eastlake. I left everything but what little money I had. You see—I was a failure. I'd like to stay with you a while; when perhaps I might get on my feet again. I feel easier than I have for weeks.” He realized, surprised, that this was so. He had a conviction that he could sleep here, by the stream, in the still, flowering woods. “I haven't any interest in temples,” he continued; “but I guess—two men—we won't argue about that. Some allowance on both sides. But I am interested in iron; I'd like to know this forge of yours backward. I've discovered a sort of hankering after the idea; just that—iron. It's a tremendous fact, and you can keep it from rusting.”