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 it, unhewn save for two words carved in Roman capitals—­“PARCERE SUBJECTIS.”

A key turned in the wicket.  “Visitors for the Commandant!” They stepped through, and after pausing a moment while the porter shot the lock again behind them, followed him across the yard to the Commandant’s quarters.

The outer wall of the great War Prison enclosed a circle of thirty acres; within it a second wall surrounded an acre in which stood the five rectangular blocks of the prison proper, with two slightly smaller buildings—­the one a hospital, the other set apart for the petty officers; and between the inner and outer walls ran a via militaris, close on a mile in circumference, constantly paraded by the guard, and having raised platforms from which the sentinels could overlook the inner wall and the area.  The area was not completely circular, since, where it faced the great gate, a segment had been cut out of it for the Commandant’s quarters and outbuildings and the entrance yard, across which, our travellers now followed their guide.