"
"And could they take him to no better place?"
"No. There is no habitation of any kind within three miles."
No more was said. It was not very easy to talk while flying through the
air at the utmost speed of a spirited horse.
The moon bathed the broad moorland in mellow light. The wide expanse of
level turf looked like a sea of black water that had suddenly been
frozen into stillness. Not a tree--not a patch of brushwood, or a
solitary bush--broke the monotony of the scene: but far away against
the moonlit horizon rose a wild and craggy steep, and on the summit of
that steep appeared a massive tower, with black and ruined battlements,
that stood out grimly against the luminous sky.
This was Yarborough Tower--a stronghold that had defied many a
besieging force in the obscure past; but of the origin of which little
was now known.
Victor Carrington drove the gig up a rough and narrow road that curved
around the sides of the craggy hill, and wound gradually towards the
top.
He was obliged to drive slowly here, and Lady Eversleigh had ample
leisure to gaze upwards at the dreary-looking ruin, whose walls seemed
more densely black as they grew nearer and nearer.
"What a horrible place!" she murmured. "To think of my husband lying
there--with no better shelter than those ruined walls in the hour of
his suffering."
Honoria Eversleigh looked around her with a shudder, as the gig passed
across a narrow wooden drawbridge that spanned an enormous chasm in the
craggy hill-side.
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