ctions,
extracted from them in half-a-dozen curt questions more information
than, five minutes before, they were conscious of possessing, to judge
from the scratching of heads which produced it; finally, he handed
Dorothea into the chaise, sprang in himself, and closed discussion
with a slam of the door. They were driven off amid the salaams of
ostler, boots, waiter, and two chambermaids, among whom he had
scattered largess with the lordliest hand.

So the chaise ploughed through Exeter to Moreton Hampstead, where they
supped and rested for another night. But before dawn they were off
again. Snow lay in thick drifts on the skirts of the great moor, and
snow whirled about them as they climbed, until day broke upon a howling
desert, across which Dorothea peered but could discern no features.
Not leagues but years divided Bayfield from this tableland, high over
all the world, uninhabited, without tree or gate or hedge. Her eyes
were heavy with lack of sleep, smarting with the bite of the north
wind, which neither ceased nor eased until, towards ten o'clock, the
carriage began to lumber downhill towards Two Bridges, under the lee of
Crockern Tor. Beyond came a heavy piece of collar work, the horses
dropping to a walk as they heaved through the drifts towards a
depression between two tors closing the view ahead. Dorothea's eyes,
avoiding the wind, were fixed on the tor to the left, when Endymion
touched her hand and pointed towards the base of the other. There,
grey--almost black--against the white hillside, a mass of masonry
loomed up through the weather; the great circle of the War Prison.

The road did not lead them to it direct. They must halt first at the
bare village of Prince Town, and drink coffee and warm themselves at
the "Plume of Feathers Inn," before facing the last few hundred yards
beneath the lee of North Hessary. But a little before noon, Dorothea--
still with a sense of being lifted on a platform miles above the world
she knew--alighted before a tremendous archway of piled granite set
in a featureless wall, and closed with a sheeted gate of iron. A grey-
coated sentry, pacing here in front of his snow-capped box, challenged
and demanded their business.

"Visitors for the Commandant!" The sentry tugged at an iron bellpull,
and a bell tolled twice within. Dorothea's feet were half-frozen in
spite of her wraps--she stamped them in the snow while she studied the
gateway and the enormous blocks which arched i