midday
II THE FORGE Jasper Penny stood at a window of his bed room , his left arm carried in a black silk handkerchief , gazing down at the long , low roof of Myrtle Forge , built by his great , great grandfather Gilbert over a hundred and ten years before . It was February , and he could hear the ringing blows of axes , cutting the ice out of the forebay to liberate the water power for the completion of a forging of iron destined to be rolled into tracks for the slowly lengthening Columbia Steam Railway System . It was midday , a grey sky held a brighter , diffused radiance where the veiled sun hung without warmth , and the earth was everywhere frozen granite-like . He could see beyond the Forge shed heaped charcoal , and the black mass seemed no more dead than the ground or bare , brittle trees sweeping down and up to where , on encircling hills , they were lifted sharply against the cloudy monotony . He was ordinarily impervious to the influence of weather , the more depressing aspects of nature ; but now he was conscious of a dejection communicated , in part at least , he felt , by the bleak prospect without . Another , and infinitely more arresting , reason for this feeling had just stirred his thoughts -- for the first time he was conscious of the invidious , beginning weariness of accumulating years .