tower in the form of a classical column, which, though partly
immersed in the plantation, rose above the tree-tops to a
considerable height. Upon this object the eyes of lady and servant
were bent.

'Then there is no road leading near it?' she asked.

'Nothing nearer than where we are now, my lady.'

'Then drive home,' she said after a moment. And the carriage rolled
on its way.

A few days later, the same lady, in the same carriage, passed that
spot again. Her eyes, as before, turned to the distant tower.

'Nobbs,' she said to the coachman, 'could you find your way home
through that field, so as to get near the outskirts of the
plantation where the column is?'

The coachman regarded the field. 'Well, my lady,' he observed, 'in
dry weather we might drive in there by inching and pinching, and so
get across by Five-and-Twenty Acres, all being well. But the ground
is so heavy after these rains that perhaps it would hardly be safe
to try it now.'

'Perhaps not,' she assented indifferently. 'Remember it, will you,
at a drier time?'

And again the carriage sped along the road, the lady's eyes resting
on the segmental hill, the blue trees that muffled it, and the