Once outside the fly, I found myself apparently at the foot of a tower, a door stood open in front of me, and on the doorstep a man holding a lantern.
I was, however, given very little time to contemplate this scene; the big man seized my right arm, and his companion my left; between them, they rushed me up a flight of steps immediately inside the tower.
These steps constituted a spiral staircase which wound round the interior of the tower; ever and anon as we passed a small window I saw the lights of Bath twinkling in the distance.
Beyond a few walks during the ten days I had spent there—my first visit—I knew very little of Bath or its neighbourhood, therefore I had no opportunity of taking my bearings.
I was urged up this staircase in a manner which I should have thought unusual had I not remembered the men's complaints of the long journey—which they had made twice—in the fly.
Finally we reached a door, and they simply pushed me through it into a large room. It was evidently the top storey of the tower and had windows looking all ways. It was perfectly circular in shape, was fairly clean, and had a fire burning in a grate with a wire screen before it; in one corner was a bed.
The two men released their hold as I looked around, and the dark one went to a corner and picked up a chain.
"Come here!" he shouted to me roughly.
His colleague assisted me by giving me a shove in his direction. Then, in a twinkling, he fixed a steel ring to my left ankle, snapped it there and locked a small padlock on it.
I was chained up like a dog!