y anybody did know--that beyond the
mountains, between them and the sea, lay a tract of country, barren,
level, bare, except for short, stunted grass, and here and there a patch
of tiny flowers. Not a bush--not a tree not a resting place for bird or
beast was in that dreary plain. In summer the sunshine fell upon it hour
after hour with a blinding glare; in winter the winds and rains swept
over it unhindered, and the snow came down steadily, noiselessly,
covering it from end to end in one great white sheet, which lay for days
and weeks unmarked by a single footprint.

Not a pleasant place to live in--and nobody did live there, apparently.
The only sign that human creatures had ever been near the spot was one
large round tower which rose up in the center of the plain, and might
be seen all over it--if there had been anybody to see, which there never
was. Rose right up out of the ground, as if it had grown of itself, like
a mushroom. But it was not at all mushroom-like; on the contrary, it was
very solidly built. In form it resembled the Irish round towers, which
have puzzled people for so long, nobody being able to find out when,
or by whom, or for what purpose they were made; seemingly for no use
at all, like this tower. It was circular, of very firm brickwork, with
neither doors nor windows, until near the top, when you could perceive
some slits in the wall through which one might possibly creep in or look
out. Its height was nearly a hundred feet, and it had a battlemented
parapet showing sharp against the sky.

As the plain was quite desolate--almost like a desert, only without
sand, and led to nowhere except the still more desolate seacoast--nobody
ever crossed it. Whatever mystery there was about the tower, it and the
sky and the plain kept their secret to themselves.

It was a very great secret indeed,--a state secret,--which none but so
clever a man as the present King of Nomansland would ever have thought
of. How he carried it out, undiscovered, I cannot tell. People said,
long afterward, that it was by means of a gang of condemned criminals,
who were set to work, and executed immediately after they had done, so
that nobody knew anything, or in the least suspected the real fact.

And what was the fact? Why, that this tower, which seemed a mere mass
of masonry, utterly forsaken and uninhabited, was not so at all. Within
twenty feet of the top some ingenious architect had planned a perfect
little house, divided