The cautious merchant had allowed Monjoy the use of the garret at the top of the winding stairs only on certain conditions, the first of which became apparent as soon as the two men entered the chamber. In the middle of the floor lay what seemed to be a broken bench, for it was without legs at one end, had a couple of strong hooked angle-irons instead, and lay tilted up on the floor. The garret was dark, without window, fireplace, cupboard or shelves. Two sets of double crane-doors only, the one set towards the Fullergate, and the other towards the crofts and gardens and waste ground at the back of the building, made the place anything but four bare walls; but on a sheet of iron opposite the door a hearth of bricks and a small furnace had been built, and from this proceeded fumes of charcoal for which there was no outlet. Ellah choked immediately; and Monjoy barred the door.
It was the broken table that was the first of Matthew’s precautions. Monjoy dragged it to the door and set the angle-hooks over the heavy bar, making it apparent that he himself could under no circumstances leave the garret without first clearing away the table and all that might lie on it. Monjoy lighted a candle; then, binding a handkerchief over his own mouth and another over Ellah’s, he gave the deaf man to understand that for a few minutes he must submit to have his eyes bandaged. Ellah heard him moving about; and when, in a few minutes, the bandage was removed again, Ellah saw that the bench that secured and was secured by the door was spread with various appliances, obtained he knew not whence. No engraver’s sandbag, no water globe and burins, however, were there. First, there was a delicate balance; then a number of test-rings of iron and calcined bone; then a pestle and mortar; and after these, pipkins and crucibles, a bowl of quicksilver, a number of small leaden cubes like badly-made dice, and other things. Monjoy emptied his pockets of stones; then he stripped to his shirt and breeches, and, passing to his hearth, began to revive it with a pair of bellows. The coughing of the bellows and a red glow began to fill the chamber, and Ellah, for all the tight, stifling breathing, watched sharply and eagerly.
Monjoy went about his work in silence, pressing now and then the muffler more closely about his mouth. When the hearth glowed brightly, he set a beam of wood across it, shaped a place in the ashes underneath the billet, and introduced an empty test-ring. He made signs for Ellah to take a turn at the bellows. He began to busy himself at his bench, now grinding small stones with the pestle and mortar muffled in a cloth, now seeing to other matters. The garret became bright as the bellows roared, and unbearably hot, and Ellah dropped the bellows and made for the door, through the chink of which a little air entered. By and by, into the test-ring in the glowing furnace Monjoy introduced one of the little leaden cubes, and plied the bellows more gently. He paid no heed when Ellah stooped over him, and presently Ellah returned to the door again. Half an hour passed; Monjoy’s face streamed, and his eyes were drowsy; and Ellah nodded against the bench by the door. Monjoy roused himself, and with a pair of tongs drew the test from the furnace, setting it to cool. Ellah dozed, and Monjoy crossed over and listened to his breathing. Then he weighed out from his mortar a pound or so of crushed ore, added iron filings to it, set it in a melting-pot in the furnace, and began with the bellows again. An hour passed. The air was well nigh insupportable. He rose again, tottered to his bench, took a deep gulp of water, and stripped off even his shirt. He returned to the bellows; rivulets ran down his giant back; he blundered heavily to the table with the crucible in a pair of tongs and began to dig out the slag; and with the small residue in another ring he crossed again to the furnace and continued mechanically with the bellows. Ellah had fallen across the bench, and slept among the tests and crucibles.
* * * * *
By two o’clock in the morning Monjoy had allowed the furnace to die down again, had extinguished his candle for a few minutes, and had flung open the double doors at the back for air. The cool night restored him, and presently he closed the doors and lighted the candle again. He shook Ellah, who opened his eyes sluggishly, and Monjoy’s voice wheezed as he handed him his trumpet and bade him draw near the candle.
Ranged along the end of the bench were six test-rings. In the little hollow that had been scraped in the bone of each a bead of grey metal lay. The smallest was no more than a sparrow-pellet; two of them would weigh perhaps a couple of pennyweights each; but one dull globule could hardly have drawn on a balance less than half an ounce, while another was only a grain or two smaller. Monjoy’s hand was tapping with a regular movement on the first of the rings.
“This,” he whispered—for his constricted throat barely emitted a sound, “this—listen your best, for I can’t speak louder—this was that blackish clay with the flints, Fluett way, a pound of it—they’re all pounds. This one—this is that red earth with pyrites, a mile below the bellpits—I had to get that out with quicksilver—we can throw both those away.... Wait a minute.... Throw this away, too—that’s from Booth—no, Soyland. They’re nothing—not one in a hundred, you understand.... But this, that’s three and more in the hundred, is what we picked up to-day—three in the hundred, with all the lead consumed too—you scratched your feet a bit getting this.... And the biggest of all, eighty pounds to the ton—Holdsworth Head, where your stomach turned—take it....”
He was utterly exhausted, but Ellah had drawn so near to the candle that his cropped hair singed. His prominent eyes gleamed with an avaricious light.
“Have ye made these to-night?” he said hoarsely.
“No—weeks—weeks—I’ll build a furnace, two furnaces, in the Slack ... a mill to crush it ... for fuel we’ll open up the coal again....”