They passed out, Ellah leaning on the supervisor.
Two days later there came a word that drove all else from men’s minds: All was ready at last at the Slack. There were vague rumours of ceremonies and rites to be observed, as if, instead of two furnaces set up in defiance of the laws of the land, two altars were to be consecrated. The obtaining of fuel (it was said) still remained a difficulty, but one thing at a time; that would be solved by and by, and there was to be no further delaying of the inauguration. Monjoy had been in Horwick for a couple of days; at nine o’clock of a July evening he climbed the Scout and strode along the Causeway. It was a serene and burning sunset, and the purple of the heather was turned to a rich low gold. Sheep called from hill to hill, and from time to time grouse rose and fled. Slowly the sun went down, turning the moor to ink; the moon would not rise till midnight; and only the grey Causeway seemed of itself to retain some dim glimmer of day. That, too, died down; the night became still and sultry; and Big Monjoy continued to stride towards the Slack long after the immense moor had become a thronging together of shadows and darkness.
Down in the Slack lanterns moved, and the confused noise of voices could be heard a mile away. Dark forms, running hither and thither, seemed to interweave with the shadows, while others lay stretched up the hillside or sat squatting on barrows and timbers. For a hundred yards and more the slope of the hill showed the toil of many weeks. Hillocks of earth, sand, clay, stones, a confusion of timbers, barrows, baulks, spades and mattocks, ropes, lime-heaps and what not, littered the border of the Slack. Had you tried to thread your way among these you would have run the risk of walking suddenly into the deep cutting in the hillside that sheltered the furnaces themselves. The larger furnace for smelting was built into the hill; the smaller refining furnace stood cheek by jowl with it, and was barely five feet high. A tripod of heavy beams, that had served its end with the completion of the construction, had not yet been taken down, and a half-made tackle like a heavy capstan, apparently for crushing, seemed to have been abandoned. The smaller of the furnaces was fitted with a pair of bellows in a gibbet-like frame; and fifty yards away, where the Slack turned on itself towards Brotherton Bog, was the older plant--the heavy frames in which the coining-dies were set, to be struck with the sledges.