The steep, narrow alleys leading upward were scarce lighted; here and there glimmered a pale corner-lamp, but on a black night such as this the oil-lit windows of a little shop, and the occasional gleam from doors, proved very serviceable as a help in picking one's path.
Towards the top of the hill there was no paving, and mud lay thick.
Indescribable the confusion of this toilers' settlement--houses and workshops tumbled together as if by chance, the ways climbing and winding into all manner of pitch-dark recesses, where eats prowled stealthily.

In one spot silence and not a hint of life; in another, children noisily at play amid piles of old metal or miscellaneous rubbish.

From the labyrinth which was so familiar to her, Eve issued of a sudden on to a sort of terrace, where the air blew shrewdly: beneath lay cottage roofs, and in front a limitless gloom, which by daylight would have been an extensive northward view, comprising the towns of Bilston and Wolverhampton.

It was now a black gulf, without form and void, sputtering fire.

Flames that leapt out of nothing, and as suddenly disappeared; tongues of yellow or of crimson, quivering, lambent, seeming to snatch and devour and then fall back in satiety.
When a cluster of these fires shot forth together, the sky above became illumined with a broad glare, which throbbed and pulsed in the manner of sheet-lightning, though more lurid, and in a few seconds was gone.
She paused here for a moment, rather to rest after her climb than to look at what she had seen so often, then directed her steps to one of the houses within sight.