CHAPTER IV


Hilliard's lodgings--they were represented by a single room--
commanded a prospect which, to him a weariness and a disgust, would
have seemed impressive enough to eyes beholding it for the first
time. On the afternoon of his last day at Dudley he stood by the
window and looked forth, congratulating himself, with a fierceness
of emotion which defied misgiving, that he would gaze no more on
this scene of his servitude.

The house was one of a row situated on a terrace, above a muddy
declivity marked with footpaths. It looked over a wide expanse of
waste ground, covered in places with coarse herbage, but for the
most part undulating in bare tracts of slag and cinder. Opposite,
some quarter of a mile away, rose a lofty dome-shaped hill,
tree-clad from base to summit, and rearing above the bare branches
of its topmost trees the ruined keep of Dudley Castle. Along the
foot of this hill ran the highway which descends from Dudley town--
hidden by rising ground on the left--to the low-lying
railway-station; there, beyond, the eye traversed a great plain, its
limit the blending of earth and sky in lurid cloud. A ray of yellow
sunset touched the height and its crowning ruin; at the zenith shone
a space of pure pale blue save for these points of relief the
picture was colourless and uniformly sombre. Far and near,
innumerable chimneys sent forth fumes of various density broad-flung
jets of steam, coldly white against the murky distance; wan smoke