Hilliard's lodgings--they were represented by a single room--commanded a prospect which, to him a weariness and a disgust, would have seemed impressive enough to eyes beholding it for the first time.

On the afternoon of his last day at Dudley he stood by the window and looked forth, congratulating himself, with a fierceness of emotion which defied misgiving, that he would gaze no more on this scene of his servitude.
The house was one of a row situated on a terrace, above a muddy declivity marked with footpaths.

It looked over a wide expanse of waste ground, covered in places with coarse herbage, but for the most part undulating in bare tracts of slag and cinder.

Opposite, some quarter of a mile away, rose a lofty dome-shaped hill, tree-clad from base to summit, and rearing above the bare branches of its topmost trees the ruined keep of Dudley Castle.

Along the foot of this hill ran the highway which descends from Dudley town--hidden by rising ground on the left--to the low-lying railway-station; there, beyond, the eye traversed a great plain, its limit the blending of earth and sky in lurid cloud.