For a moment he heard voices beyond a second door in front of him.

Then there was silence.
In wonder he stared about him, and Jean did not interrupt his gaze.

He stood in a great room whose walls were of logs and axe-hewn timbers.

It was a room forty feet long by twenty in width, massive in its build, with walls and ceiling stained a deep brown.

In one end was a fireplace large enough to hold a pile of logs six feet in length, and in this a small fire was smouldering.