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Another kettle, reversed, formed the lid, and the seam was luted with clay. On applying heat, the mercury was volatilized and carried into a chimney-stack, where it condensed and flowed back into a reservoir, and then was led in pipes into another kettle outside.

Another was dashed on and the bucket passed back, and another, and another; but the effect produced was so little that, after distributing about a dozen which the wheelwright sent along the line, making the men work eagerly, as he plunged the buckets into the drain and brought them dripping out, the squire shouted, "Hold hard!" and descended to change the position of the long ladder he was on by dragging out the foot till it was at such an angle that the implement now lay flat upon the thatch, so that anyone could walk right up to the chimney-stack.

Where had been formerly but the click of the shuttle was soon the roar of 'power, handlooms were pushed into a corner as a room is cleared for a dance; every morning at half-past five the town was wakened with a yell, and from a chimney-stack that rose high into our caller air the conqueror waved for evermore his flag of smoke.

The slate roofs were mean, low-pitched, without any grace of overshadowing eaves. At either end, a tall chimney-stack rose like the long ears of some startled, vacant-faced small animal. Behind the house, a thick plantation of beech and sycamore served to make its square blank whiteness visible for a quite considerable distance out to sea.

But you do not grasp the full connection between these houses of the dead and the living, the unnatural marriage of stately sepulchres and squalid houses, till, lower down, where the road has sunk far below the surface of the cemetery, and the very roofs are scarcely on a level with its wall, you observe that a proprietor has taken advantage of a tall monument and trained a chimney-stack against its back.

This was solemn indeed, so he sought another way out. He got on the roof, for he remembered a chimney-stack, cloaked with ivy, which was built straight from the ground, and he thought he might climb down it. He found the chimney and began the descent confidently, for he had once borne a good reputation at the Montanvert and Cortina.

Lathrop and his companion had barely scaled the parapet of the window when a huge central crash sent its resounding din circling round the leafless woods, and the two climbing figures disappeared from view amid a fresh rush of smoke and flame. The great western chimney-stack had fallen.

Mr and Mrs Specklems, the starlings, were very undecided about the hole in the chimney-stack, so much so, that when they had half-furnished it, they altered their minds and went to the great crack half way up the old cedar, and settled there; "like a pair of giddy unsettled things," as the jackdaw said, who meant to have been their neighbour; but was not above taking possession of the soft bed they had left behind.

From innumerable chimneys the curled smoke gives evidence that the thrifty housewife or, what is rarer in Stillwater, the hired girl has lighted the kitchen fire. The chimney-stack of one house at the end of a small court the last house on the easterly edge of the village, and standing quite alone sends up no smoke.

But to-night they were no blacker than their canopy of sky; not a chimney-stack stood out against the starless night; one had to feel one's way in order to avoid tripping over the low parapets of the L-shaped wells that ran from roof to basement to light the inner rooms.