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.

She found the man she was looking for, at last, heaping coal on a furnace.  He had not time to eat his supper; so she went behind the furnace, and waited.  Only a few men were with him, and they noticed her only by a “Hyur comes t’ hunchback, Wolfe.”

Deborah was stupid with sleep; her back pained her sharply; and her teeth chattered with cold, with the rain that soaked her clothes and dripped from her at every step.  She stood, however, patiently holding the pail, and waiting.

“Hout, woman! ye look like a drowned cat.  Come near to the fire,”—­said one of the men, approaching to scrape away the ashes.

She shook her head.  Wolfe had forgotten her.  He turned, hearing the man, and came closer.

“I did no’ think; gi’ me my supper, woman.”

She watched him eat with a painful eagerness.  With a woman’s quick instinct, she saw that he was not hungry,—­was eating to please her.  Her pale, watery eyes began to gather a strange light.

“Is’t good, Hugh?  T’ale was a bit sour, I feared.”

“No, good enough.”  He hesitated a moment.  “Ye’re tired, poor lass!  Bide here till I go.  Lay down there on that heap of ash, and go to sleep.”

He threw her an old coat for a pillow, and turned to his work.  The heap was the refuse of the burnt iron, and was not a hard bed; the half-smothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and cold shiver.

Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp, dirty rag,—­yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime:  more fitting, if one looked deeper into the heart of things,—­at her thwarted woman’s form, her colorless life, her waking stupor that smothered pain and hunger,—­even more fit to be a type of her class.  Deeper yet