ere heavily grey. Then
tall chimneys poured smoke over the landscape and eclipsed the sun; and
through strangely shaped furnaces and chimneys of many forms, which here
poured fire from their throats like dragons, and there might have been
the huge retorts and chemical apparatus of some giant alchemist, we ran
into the station of a manufacturing town.

I gazed at the high blackened warehouses, chimneys, and furnaces, which
loomed out of the stifling smoke and clanging noises, with horror and
wonder.

"What a dreadful place!" I exclaimed. "Look at those dreadful things
with flames coming out; and oh, Eleanor! there's fire coming out of the
ground there. And look at that man opening that great oven door! Oh,
what a fire! And what's he poking in it for? And do look! all the men
are black. And what a frightful noise everything makes!"

Eleanor was looking all the time, but with a complacent expression. She
only said, "It is a very busy place. I hear trade's good just now, too."
And, "You should see the furnaces at night, Margery, lighting up all the
hills. It's grand!"

As she sniffed up the smoke with, I might almost say, relish, I felt
that she did not sympathize with my disgust. But any discussion on the
subject was stopped by our having to change carriages, and we had just
settled ourselves comfortably once more, when I got a bit of iron
"filings" into my eye. It gave me a good deal of pain and inconvenience,
and by the time that I could look out of the window again, we had left
the black town far behind. The hills were almost mountains now, and
sloped away on all sides of us in bleak and awful grandeur. The
woodlands were fewer; we were on the moors. Only a few hours back we had
been amongst deep hedges and shady lanes, and now for hedges we had
stone walls, and for deep embowered lanes we could trace the unsheltered
roads, gleaming as they wound over miles of distant hills. Deep below us
brawled a river, with here and there a gaunt mill or stone-built hamlet
on its banks.

I had never seen any country like this; and if I had been horrified by
the black town, my delight with the noble scenery beyond it was in
proportion. I stood at the open window, with the moor breeze blowing my
hair into the wildest elf-locks, rapturously excited as the great hills
unfolded themselves and the shifting clouds sent shifting purple shadows
over them. Very dark and stern they looked in shade, and then, in a
moment more, the cloud wa