Gaunt was set to make the Survey House’s pins, because the Judgment said he would work the bell-post, and the Survey House was standing where the bell-post’s iron was supposed to go.
He had objected to this at the Chamber’s table, at the candle-clock, with his fist on the wood and his face the colour of a forge-coal. He had objected to the bell-post, which was a Watch matter and not a Forge matter. He had objected to the Survey House, which he said was not a house but a flattering arrangement of timber and stone that the lodgers had been persuaded to call a roof. He had objected to the Judgment, which had fined him forty days of labour for the Watch on the strength of a single sentence about a dented bell. Then he had objected to the Chamber’s objection to his objection, and by the time Tallow had recorded the vote, Gaunt had objected to the minute-book itself, on the grounds that it was too neat.
Then he had gone down to the Forge and made the pins.
The Forge was the hottest place in the Hold after the Kitchen’s bread-oven, and Gaunt liked it that way, and so did the iron. He had a rack of old bell-post iron on the cold side of the hearth, black with the rot of years, and he had insisted, against Tallow’s dismay and Harrow’s delight, that every pin for the Survey House be made from it. The Judgment, he…
