In a river town buried in foundry smoke, Hugh Wolfe, a Welsh puddler, works the night furnaces while his hunchbacked cousin Deborah brings his supper. From the refuse called korl he carves a striking figure of a hungry woman, and when gentlemen touring the mill see it, their idle talk and one desperate act decide his fate.
An 1861 story from the Atlantic Monthly, among the first American fictions of industrial labour, rediscovered in the 1970s. Download the free EPUB.