He was yet to see his father in another light. That was the light of universal human affection. For a day there were two kinds of people in New Damascus,—those who knew Aaron and others. Nobody was asked. It was meant to be a private ceremony. But that was impossible. All who knew him came to assist at the obsequies. They came from Quality Street and they came from the company houses beyond the canal. There were hundreds of old iron workers and miners, who, at John’s suggestion, walked in a body behind the hearse. He was amazed and deeply moved by all this demonstration of feeling; and saddened by it at the same time, for here were people strange to him whose knowledge of his father was older and greater than his own.

Enoch Gib neither came nor stayed away. As the funeral procession departed from the inn he was observed sitting on the veranda, his feet on the railing, his hat on his head, smoking a cigar, gazing vacantly into space.

Somebody said: “Tonight he will give a blue ticket to every man in the mill who took time off for this. That’s why he came.”

That was not true. Then why did he come? There is no answer. He himself probably did not know. The mourners returning saw him sitting there still. He sat there for hours, until evening, utterly oblivious. Then he rose, crossed the town and disappeared up the path to Throne Rock.

Late that night the furnace men at No. 4, deaf as furnace men by habit are to the uproar of the smelting process, looked at one another saying, “What was that?”

It was a sound of ribald laughter off the mountain, home downward by the wind.

An old man spoke, one who stood in an open shirt, grey hair on his chest, stray grey curls below the edge of his skull cap, alight in the furnace glow.

“That’s Enoch,” he said, “crowing over Aaron.”

They listened. The laugh was not repeated. But as they turned away, letting down their breath, another sound much worse came down the wind and caused their skins to creep.

That was Enoch screaming.

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