the young man could no longer see the girl, but ever before his eyes was
the piteous, unslippered little foot with its arched instep.

The party was now at the base of the declivity. Instead of following the
road to the village, the horses turned abruptly into a bridle-path
branching off to the left, and in the course of a few minutes passed
through an iron-spiked gateway in a high brick wall surrounding the
large red structure which had puzzled Lynde on first discovering the
town. The double gates stood wide open and were untended; they went to,
however, with a clang, and the massive bolts were shot as soon as the
party had entered. In the courtyard Lynde was hastily assisted from the
horse; he did not have an opportunity to observe what became of the
other three prisoners. When his hands were freed he docilely allowed
himself to be conducted up a flight of stone steps and into the
vestibule of the building, and thence, through a long corridor, to a
small room in which his guard left him. The door closed with a spring
not practicable from the inside, as Lynde ascertained on inspection.

The chamber was not exactly a cell; it resembled rather the waiting-room
of a penitentiary. The carpet, of a tasteless, gaudy pattern, was well
worn, and the few pieces of hair-cloth furniture, a sofa, a table, and
chairs, had a stiff, official air. A strongly barred window gave upon a
contracted garden--one of those gardens sometimes attached to prisons,
with mathematically cut box borders, and squares of unhealthy, party-
colored flowers looking like gangs of convicts going to meals. On his
arrival at the place Edward Lynde had offered no resistance, trusting
that some sort of judicial examination would promptly set him at
liberty. Faint from want of food, jaded by his exertions, and chafing at
the delay, he threw himself upon the sofa, and waited.