"He is very ill," said Dorothea, seriously.
"Indeed? Poor fellow, poor fellow. Still, that scarcely explains—"
"And you will be good, and take your meals regularly when Mudge beats the gong? And you won't sit up late and set fire to the house? But I must run off and tell everyone to take care of you."
She kissed him again, and was half-way down the corridor before he called after her:
"Dorothea, Dorothea! the drawings!"
"Ah, to be sure; I forgot," she murmured, as he thrust the parcel into her hand.
"Forgot? Forgot the drawings? But, God bless my soul!—"
He passed his hand over his grey hairs and stared down the corridor after her.
The roads were heavy to start, with, and beyond Chard they grew heavier. At Honiton, which our travellers reached at midnight, it was snowing; and Dorothea, when the sleepy chamber-maid aroused her at dawn, looked out upon a forbidding world of white. The postboys were growling, and she half feared that Endymion would abandon the journey for the day. But if he lacked her zeal, he had the true Englishman's hatred of turning back. She, who had known him always for a master of men, learned a new awe of her splendid brother. He took command; he cross-examined landlord and postboys, pooh-poohed their objections, extracted from them in half-a-dozen curt questions more information than, five minutes before, they were conscious of possessing, to judge from the scratching of heads which produced it; finally, he handed Dorothea into the chaise, sprang in himself, and closed discussion with a slam of the door. They were driven off amid the salaams of ostler, boots, waiter, and two chambermaids, among whom he had scattered largess with the lordliest hand.
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.