steps descending into a walled garden of some size.  The man who conducted me into this room made signs to me that I might go down and walk in the garden whenever I pleased, and intimated that I should shortly have something brought me to eat.  I was allowed to retain my blankets, and the few things which I had wrapped inside them, but it was plain that I was to consider myself a prisoner—­for how long a period I could not by any means determine.  He then left me alone.

CHAPTER VIII:  IN PRISON

And now for the first time my courage completely failed me.  It is enough to say that I was penniless, and a prisoner in a foreign country, where I had no friend, nor any knowledge of the customs or language of the people.  I was at the mercy of men with whom I had little in common.  And yet, engrossed as I was with my extremely difficult and doubtful position, I could not help feeling deeply interested in the people among whom I had fallen.  What was the meaning of that room full of old machinery which I had just seen, and of the displeasure with which the magistrate had regarded my watch?  The people had very little machinery now.  I had been struck with this over and over again, though I had not been more than four-and-twenty hours in the country.  They were about as far advanced as Europeans of the twelfth or thirteenth century; certainly not more so.  And yet they must have had at one time the fullest knowledge of our own most recent inventions.  How could it have happened that having been once so far in advance they were now as much behind us?  It was evident that it was not from ignorance.  They knew my watch as a watch when they saw it; and the care with which the broken machines were preserved and ticketed, proved that they had not lost the recollection of their former civilisation.  The more I thought, the less I could understand it; but at last I concluded that they must have worked out their mines of coal and iron, till either none were left, or so few, that the use of these metals was restricted to the very highest nobility.  This was the only solution I could think of; and, though I afterwards found how entirely mistaken it was, I felt quite sure then that it must be the right one.

I had hardly arrived at this opinion for above four or five minutes, when the door opened, and a young woman made her appearance with a tray, and a very appetising smell of dinner.  I gazed upon her with admiration as she laid a cloth and set a savoury-looking dish upon the table.  As I beheld her I felt as though my position was already much ameliorated, for the very sight of her carried great comfort.  She was not more than twenty, rather above the middle height, active and strong, but yet most delicately featured; her lips were full and sweet; her eyes were of a deep hazel, and fringed with long and springing eyelashes; her hair was neatly braided from off her forehead; her complexion was simply exquisite; her