footways, perhaps six feet high, upon which, in a monotonous
series, opened the living room doors of rows of dark, low cottages.
The perspective of squat blue slate roofs and clustering chimneys
drifted downward towards the irregular open space before the
colliery--a space covered with coaly, wheel-scarred mud, with a
patch of weedy dump to the left and the colliery gates to the right.
Beyond, the High Street with shops resumed again in good earnest
and went on, and the lines of the steam-tramway that started out
from before my feet, and were here shining and acutely visible
with reflected skylight and here lost in a shadow, took up for one
acute moment the greasy yellow irradiation of a newly lit gaslamp
as they vanished round the bend. Beyond, spread a darkling marsh
of homes, an infinitude of little smoking hovels, and emergent,
meager churches, public-houses, board schools, and other buildings
amidst the prevailing chimneys of Swathinglea. To the right, very
clear and relatively high, the Bantock Burden pit-mouth was marked
by a gaunt lattice bearing a great black wheel, very sharp and
distinct in the twilight, and beyond, in an irregular perspective,
were others following the lie of the seams. The general effect,
as one came down the hill, was of a dark compressed life beneath
a very high and wide and luminous evening sky, against which these
pit-wheels rose. And ruling the calm spaciousness of that heaven
was the great comet, now green-white, and wonderful for all who
had eyes to see.

The fading afterglow of the sunset threw up all the contours and
skyline to the west, and the comet rose eastward out of the pouring
tumult of smoke from Bladden's forges. The moon had still to rise.

By this time the comet had begun to assume the cloudlike form still