cottages, grimy without, but sometimes, as could be seen through an
open door admitting into the chief room, clean and homely-looking
within. The steep, narrow alleys leading upward were scarce lighted;
here and there glimmered a pale corner-lamp, but on a black night
such as this the oil-lit windows of a little shop, and the
occasional gleam from doors, proved very serviceable as a help in
picking one's path. Towards the top of the hill there was no paving,
and mud lay thick. Indescribable the confusion of this toilers'
settlement--houses and workshops tumbled together as if by chance,
the ways climbing and winding into all manner of pitch-dark
recesses, where eats prowled stealthily. In one spot silence and not
a hint of life; in another, children noisily at play amid piles of
old metal or miscellaneous rubbish. From the labyrinth which was so
familiar to her, Eve issued of a sudden on to a sort of terrace,
where the air blew shrewdly: beneath lay cottage roofs, and in front
a limitless gloom, which by daylight would have been an extensive
northward view, comprising the towns of Bilston and Wolverhampton.
It was now a black gulf, without form and void, sputtering fire.
Flames that leapt out of nothing, and as suddenly disappeared;
tongues of yellow or of crimson, quivering, lambent, seeming to
snatch and devour and then fall back in satiety. When a cluster of
these fires shot forth together, the sky above became illumined with
a broad glare, which throbbed and pulsed in the manner of
sheet-lightning, though more lurid, and in a few seconds was gone.

She paused here for a moment, rather to rest after her climb than to
look at what she had seen so often, then directed her steps to one
of the houses within sight. She pushed the door, and entered a
little parlour, where a fire and a lamp made cheery welcome. By the
hearth, in a round-backed wooden chair, sat a grizzle-headed man,