No attention was paid to Lynde’s fresh outbreak.  Some one picked up his hat and set it on the back of his head, giving him quite a rakish air.  His dignity suffered until the wind took the hat again.  The party proceeded in silence, halting once to tighten a girth, and another time to wait for a straggler.  If the men spoke to one another it was in subdued tones or whispers.  Two of the horsemen trotted on a hundred yards in advance, like skirmishers thrown out in front of an attacking force.  There was something in all this mysterious precaution and reticence which bewildered and exasperated Lynde, who noted every detail.  Mary, in a transient spasm of backing, had fallen to the rear; 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.

There was a great deal of confusion in the building.  Hurried footsteps came and went up and down the passages; now and then he heard approaching voices, which tantalizingly passed on, or died away before reaching his door.  Once a shrill shriek—­a woman’s shriek—­rang through the corridor and caused him to spring to his feet.

After the lapse of an hour that had given Lynde some general idea of eternity, the door was hastily thrown open, and a small, elderly, blue-eyed gentleman, followed by a man of gigantic stature, entered the chamber.