There was a pause of silence. The eyes of both were turned to the colliery village far below, at the foot of the hill. From this high stretch of garden one looked across the valley and its straggling line of houses, to the pits on the further hillside, the straight black line of the "bank," the pulley wheels, and tall chimneys against the sky. To the left, along the ascending valley, similar chimneys and "banks" were scattered at long intervals, while to the right the valley dipped in sharp wooded undulations to a blue plain bounded by far Welsh hills. The immediate neighbourhood of Ferth, for a coal country, had a woodland charm and wildness which often surprised a stranger. There were untouched copses, and little rivers and fern-covered hills, which still held their own against the ever-encroaching mounds of "spoil" thrown out by the mines. Only the villages were invariably ugly. They were the modern creations of the coal, and had therefore no history and no originality. Their monotonous rows of red cottages were like fragments from some dingy town suburb, and the brick meeting-houses in which they abounded did nothing to abate the general unloveliness. This view from the Ferth hill was one which had great familiarity for Tressady, and yet no charm. As a boy he had had no love for his home and very few acquaintances in the village. His mother hated the place and the people. She had married very young--for the sake of money and position--to his dull old father, who nevertheless managed to keep his flighty wife in order by dint of a dumb, continuous stubbornness and tyranny, which would have overborne a stronger nature than Lady Tressady's. She was always struggling to get away from Ferth; he to keep her tied there. He was never at ease away from his estate and his pits; she felt herself ten years younger as soon as she had lost sight of the grim black house on its hilltop. And this one opinion of hers she was able to impress upon her son--George, too, was always glad to turn his back on Ferth and its people. The colliers seemed to him a brutal crew, given over to coarse sports, coarse pleasures, and an odious religion. As to their supposed grievances and hardships, his intimate conviction as a boy had always been that the miner got the utmost both out of his employers and out of society that he was worth. "Upon my word, I often think," he said at last, his inward reverie finding speech, "I often think it was a great pity my grandfather discovered the coal at all! In the long run I believe we should have done better without it. We should not at any rate have been bound up with these hordes, with whom you can no more reason than with so many blocks of their own coal!" Letty made no answer. She had turned back towards the house. Suddenly she said, with an energy that startled him,