the downward-rushing torrents of winter had washed out of the loose
soil. It was at the termination of one of these dry stream-beds that
Mr. Heard set foot on shore. Panting under the relentless heat he wound
his way along a path once carefully tended and engineered, but now
crumbling to decay.

Before him, on a treeless brown eminence, silhouetted against the blue
sky, stood the ruin. It was a fanciful woe-begone structure, utterly
desolate. The plaster, gnawed away by winds laden with searching
sea-moisture, had fallen to earth, exposing the underlying masonry of
cheap construction whose rusty colour was the same as that of the
ground from which it had arisen, and into which it now seemed ready and
eager to descend. Everything useful or portable, everything that spoke
of man's occupation, everything that suggested life and comfort--the
porcelain tiles, woodwork, window-panes, roofings, mosaic or marble
floors, leaden pipes--all this had been carried away long ago. It stood
there stark, dismantled, de-humanized, in the midday heat. Here was
nothing to charm the eye or conjure up visions of past glory; nothing
elegant or romantic; nothing savouring of grim warlike purposes. It was
a modern ruin; a pile of rubbish; a shameless, frivolous skeleton.
Those hastily built walls and staring windows wore an air of faded
futility, almost of indecency--as though the mouldering bones of some
long-forgotten lady of pleasure had crept out of their tomb to give
themselves an airing in the sunshine.

Mr. Heard, after glancing at what remained of a pretentious facade,
stepped within.

Deep shade was here, in those of the chambers whose roofs remained
intact; shade, and a steamy heat, and the noxious odour of some mineral