a man, who half lay, half crouched upon the stones, his head in his hands, in an attitude of utter abandonment.  He was dressed in a rough, weather-worn sort of cloak, and his whole appearance suggested the basest neglect; his hands were muscular and knotted; his ragged grey hair streamed over the collar of his cloak.  While we looked at him, he drew himself up into a sitting posture, and turned his face blankly upon the sky.  It was, or had been, a noble face enough, deeply lined, and with a look of command upon it; but anything like the hopeless and utter misery of the drawn cheeks and staring eyes I had never conceived.  I involuntarily drew back, feeling that it was almost wrong to look at anything so fallen and so wretched.  But Amroth detained me.

“He is not aware of us,” he said, “and I desire you to look at him.”

Presently the man rose wearily to his feet, and began to pace up and down round the walls, with the mechanical movements of a caged animal, avoiding the posts of the shelter without seeming to see them, and then cast himself down again upon the stones in a paroxysm of melancholy.  He seemed to have no desire to escape, no energy, except to suffer.  There was no hope about it all, no suggestion of prayer, nothing but blank and unadulterated suffering.

Amroth drew me back into the tower, and motioned me to the next balcony.  Again I went out.  The sight that I saw was almost more terrible than the first, because the prisoner here, penned in a similar enclosure, was more restless, and seemed to suffer more acutely.  This was a younger man, who walked swiftly and vaguely about, casting glances up at the wall which enclosed him.  Sometimes he stopped, and seemed to be pursuing some dreadful train of solitary thought; he gesticulated, and even broke out into mutterings and cries—­the cries that I had heard from without.  I could not bear to look at this sight, and coming back, besought Amroth to lead me away.  Amroth, who was himself, I perceived, deeply moved, and stood with lips compressed, nodded in token of assent.  We went quickly down the stairway, and took our way up the hill among the stones, in silence.  The shapes of similar enclosures were to be seen everywhere, and the indescribable blankness and grimness of the scene struck a chill to my heart.

From the top of the ridge we could see the same bare valleys stretching in all directions, as far as the eye could see.  The only other building in sight was a great circular tower of stone, far down in the valley, from which beat the pulse of some heavy machinery, which gave the sense, I do not know how, of a ghastly and watchful life at the centre of all.

“That is the Tower of Pain,” said Amroth, “and I will spare you the inner sight of that.  Only our very bravest and strongest can enter there and preserve any hope.  But it is well for you to know it is there, and that souls have to enter it.  It is thence that all the pain of countless worlds emanates and vibrates, and the governor of the place is the most tried and bravest of all the servants of God.  Thither we must go, for you shall have sight of him, though you shall not enter.”