tle hotel that anglers and walkers love.

The prison settlement was stuck like a black vice-spot in the midst of
wide purity. Gloom hung over it in a pall, and stole the warmth from the
sunshine. What a town to name after a Prince Regent! and what a town to
have lunch in! Yet it was a singularly good lunch.

We ate it in a hotel built of gray stone, with gray stone colonnades,
which looked like an annex to the prison. There was meat pie, which one
expected to find smoking hot, and it gave quite a shock to find it not
only cold, but iced. There was a big, cool dining-room, all mysterious,
creeping shadows, and queer echoes when one dared to speak. And unless
one did speak the silence sent a chill through one's body, but it was an
interesting chill. Certainly the hotel was the strangest I ever saw; and
the hotel dog was like no other animal on land or sea. He appeared to be
a mixture of brindled bull and Irish terrier, with long side-whiskers on
a bull-dog face. He was a nightmare, but he loved Devonshire cream and
junket, and ate them as if he were a lamb.

We stayed a long time in Princetown, and then started to go home by a
different way. Out of a vast moorland tract we descended to Dartmoor
Bridge, the prettiest oasis in the wild desert of moor which we had seen
yet. But soon we were back in moorland again, with tors rising up to
snatch at heaven with their dark claws. Each one seemed different from
all the rest, just as people's faces are different in crowds. Some were
like crests of waves, petrified as they were ready to break; but the
weirdest of all were exactly like ruined forts of dwarfs. And presently
the scenery changed again in a kaleidoscopic way. We came to lovely
Houndsgate, with a great, deep wonder-valley far below us, only to
return to a region of tors and bracken, and to plunge down the most
tremendous hill of all--a hill which was like gliding down the glassy
side of an ocean wave.

I had just exclaimed, "See, there's a motor ahead of us!" when an
extraordinary thing happened. The car going before us, very fast,
suddenly ran to the side of the steep road, stopped, some people jumped
out, and at the same instant a great flame spouted straight up toward
the sky.

Not one of us said one word, except Emily, who squeaked, and cried, "Oh,
Lionel! we shall all be killed and burned up!"

Of course, Sir Lionel didn't answer. I would have given anything to be
in Mrs. Senter's place, sitting beside him, so