Perhaps, if she had possessed an artist's eye, the picturesque oddity
of the scene might have made her step stagger less, and the path seem
shorter; but to her the mills were only "summat deilish to look at by
night."
The road leading to the mills had been quarried from the solid rock,
which rose abrupt and bare on one side of the cinder-covered road, while
the river, sluggish and black, crept past on the other. The mills for
rolling iron are simply immense tent-like roofs, covering acres of
ground, open on every side. Beneath these roofs Deborah looked in on a
city of fires, that burned hot and fiercely in the night. Fire in every
horrible form: pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames
writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons filled with
boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the strange
brewing; and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking like
revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of
glittering fire. It was like a street in Hell. Even Deborah muttered, as
she crept through, "'T looks like t' Devil's place!" It did,--in more
ways than one.
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