She might excuse him." He turned to look back at the two-spanner; it was rather far behind, and he spoke to their driver bidding him go slowly till it caught up with them.

By the time it did so, they were so close to it that they could distinguish the lines of its wandering and broken walls.

Ever since they had climbed from the wooded depths of the hills above Carlsbad to the open plateau, it had shown itself in greater and greater detail.

The detached mound of rock on which it stood rose like an island in the midst of the plain, and commanded the highways in every direction.
"I believe," Burnamy broke out, with a bitterness apparently relevant to the ruin alone, "that if you hadn't required any quarterings of nobility from him, Stoller would have made a good sort of robber baron.

He's a robber baron by nature, now, and he wouldn't have any scruple in levying tribute on us here in our one-spanner, if his castle was in good repair and his crossbowmen were not on a strike.