Other vats were empty, and if the hot boiling soap resembled a shifting quicksand, and the cooling soap the desolation of a dead world, the empty vats resembled the sea-bottom. The others, with their hint of greed and evil, might be more terrifying; these empty vats were infinitely more fantastic. Their sides were caked with the dry soap, brown-yellow, and their depths were surprisingly revealed; ending in a blunt point, like the point of a cone; they were sunk lower than the floor of the gallery into an unlighted chamber of corresponding size below. In these empty vats, various portions of apparatus were brought to light: immense chains, caked and corroded, hung like ship’s cables and were lost in the deposit at the bottom; vast strainers swung against the sides; ropes, stiffened hard as wood, spanned diagonally from side to side; and, emerging from the tapering depths, stumps of wreckage stood up, transformed from their original shape to stalagmites of dry frangible matter, that would chip away, crisp and powdery, betraying the nature of their kernel,—was it a shovel? was it an anchor? was it the decaying bones of the ancient monster?—and the low parapets of the vats were coated with the same brittle dryness that yellowed the walls of those grotesque and extraordinary pits. II I The workers were subordinate to the factory; it was a giant, a monster, that they served. At night the red glow from the chimneys,—the glow from the fires that must never flag or die,—accentuated the disregard of man’s convenience. To keep alive that red breath of activity, men must forego their privilege of sleep. The tragedy in the household of the Denes was not allowed to interrupt the general work of the factory, but the overseer, Mr. Calthorpe, offered Silas Dene a week, and Gregory Dene a day,—the day of the funeral,—as a concession to their mourning. He thought the offer sufficiently generous. The brothers Dene, however, refused it. They lived in a double-cottage; Gregory with his wife in one half; Silas and his wife, before her sudden death, in the other. Although situated in the village street, it was a lonely cottage, for “the black Denes” did not encourage neighbourly communion, nor did the neighbours trouble them with unwelcome advances. This was not surprising, for they were indeed a sinister race to whom affliction seemed naturally drawn. Nature cursed them from the hour of their birth with physical deficiencies and spiritual savagery; whether or no, as some said, the latter was only to be expected as the outcome of the former, the name of Dene remained the intimidation of the village. Others again said that Nature was not so much to be held responsible as the Denes’ father, whom everybody had known as a rake, and who never ought to have married, much less begotten children.