The old man swung about at length. "When did ye contrive this?" he
asked, rubbing the twist of the gun-barrel with his thumb. "And the
forge not heated all this day!"
"We'll heat it to-night after supper," said Young John.
In the Church of Porthennis, up to twenty-five years ago, there
stood a screen of ironwork--a marvel of arabesques and intricate
traceries, with baskets of flowers, sea-monsters, Cherubim, tying the
filigree-work and looping it together in knots and centres.
One panel had for subject a spider midmost in a web, to visit which
smiths came hundreds of miles, from all over the country, and
wondered. For it was impossible to guess how iron had ever been
beaten to such thinness or drawn so ductile. But unhappily-and
priceless as was the secret Young John Cara had chosen to let die
with him--the art of it was frail, frail as the titlark's song.
His masterpiece, indeed, had in it the corruption of Celtic art.
It could not endure its native weather, and rusted away almost to
nothingness. When the late Sir Gilbert Aubyn, the famous neo-Gothic
architect, was called in (1885) to restore Porthennis Church--or, as
we say in Cornwall, to "restroy" it--he swept the remnants away.
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