through the dusty crowds, had speculative eyes, that measured
their oats at night with a "you-don't-cheat-me" look. Even the
churches had not the grave repose of the old brown house yonder
in the hills, where the few field-people--Arians, Calvinists,
Churchmen-- gathered every Sunday, and air and sunshine and
God's charity made the day holy. These churches lifted their
hard stone faces insolently, registering their yearly alms in the
morning journals. To be sure the back-seats were free for the
poor; but the emblazoned crimson of the windows, the carving of
the arches, the very purity of the preacher's style, said plainly
that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a man in a red wamus to enter the kingdom of heaven
through that gate.

Nature itself had turned her back on the town: the river turned
aside, and but half a river crept reluctantly by; the hills were
but bare banks of yellow clay. There was a cinder-road leading
through these. Margret climbed it slowly. The low town-hills,
as I said, were bare, covered at their bases with dingy stubble-
fields. In the sides bordering the road gaped the black mouths
of the coal-pits that burrowed under the hills, under the town.
Trade everywhere,--on the earth and under it. No wonder the girl
called it a hard, scraping world. But when the road had crept
through these hills, it suddenly shook off the cinders, and
turned into the brown mould of the meadows,--turned its back on
trade and the smoky town, and speedily left it out of sight
contemptuously, never looking back once. This was the country
now in earnest.

Margret slackened her step, drawing long breaths of the fresh