But the great iron furnaces of Snedshill are seen at their most impressive at night. The strange cyclist who has never before known the road sees the reflection of their flames a long way off, and comes upon the scene bewildered by the rising and falling of the lurid light that glows intensely in one direction and sinks all other quarters in an impenetrable obscurity. It is the weirdest of scenes, the surrounding house-fronts and the tower of Prior’s Lee church standing out in the radiated glare against the blackest of backgrounds: spouting flames an angry red, turning the white light of arc-lamps down at the ironworks a wicked and debauched-looking blue. Sighings of escaping steam, like the groans of some weary Titan exhausted with labour, rise now and again, and are succeeded by thunderous crashings and huge clouds of steam and smoke, mingled with millions of sparks, as the molten metal is now and again discharged. To this is added the clattering of coal-waggons where Oakengates and the collieries lie, deep down in the valley, brilliant at night with constellations of lights. In strange contrast with all this, the benighted wayfarer sees roadside cottages whose open doors disclose housewives going about the business of their homes with all the world, as it were, for a background. The sight enforces the thought—how great the little home, how small the vast outside world! Passing Ketley Station and rising Potter Bank, great banks loom mystically on the left, and bars of light from wayside inns streak the road. If it be summer night, sounds of glee-singing rise by the way, for the colliers, although this is not Wales, have got musical culture. But daylight strips Ketley of all possible mysticism, for the soaring banks are then found to be just cinder-heaps, and the depth of the deep valley on the right is not so appalling after all. Most of Ketley’s mines are deserted now, but the cinder-heaps are gaunt as ever. Telford drove a new road through the heaps and used vast quantities of the cinders in ballasting and paving it, leaving a portion of the Watling Street, diving down a hollow, on the right. It is still there, with the disreputable roadside cottages beside it, as of old, and the same semisavage class as ever inhabiting them.