It was enough to make a brain dizzy with the clanging thunder of the engines, the whizzing spindles of red and yellow, and the hot daylight glaring over all.

The looms were watched by women, most of them bold, tawdry girls of fifteen or sixteen, or lean-jawed women from the hills, wives of the coal-diggers.

There was a breathless odour of copperas.

As he went from one room to another up through the ascending stories, he had a vague sensation of being followed.

Some shadow lurked at times behind the engines, or stole after him in the dark entries.