Once more, as the first signs of morning came, he began to feel tired, and, despite the food he had carried with him which he had stopped to eat about midnight, he was hungry.

And, as had been the case on the night of his tramp from Virballen, the first rays of the rising sun showed him a village.

It was in a hollow, and above it the ground rose sharply to a large house, evidently very old, built of a grey stone that had been weathered by the winds and rains of centuries.

It was a very old house, and strangely out of tune, it seemed to Fred, with the country though not with the times.

It was so old that it showed some traces of fortification, and Fred knew how long it was since private houses had been built with any view to defence.