THE YELLOW DOVE
But if she had any hopes that an opportunity would be given her to use the post, or even to be free from surveillance, their arrival at Windenberg speedily diminished them. For upon the platform of the small station a German officer met them and conducted them at once to a closed carriage which started off through the village immediately. The officer and Mr. Rizzio exchanged a few commonplaces which politely included her, but as to the real meaning of her visit and their possible intentions—nothing. So she sank back in her seat and looked out through a small window at the forest into which the road almost immediately passed, reaching their destination in apparent calmness, the high tension of her nerves resolutely schooled to obedience.
A farmhouse in the midst of meadows surrounded by forests, with a broad hospitable door in which they entered, seeing no one. The German officer who directed them showed her the way to a room upstairs and when she was in the room locked the door. She was in the dark, for the shutters of the windows were closed. Her first impulse at reaching a haven of privacy even though a prison was to seek the line of least resistance and give her nerves the relaxation they needed in tears. But she fought the weakness down, going to the windows and peering out through a crack in the shutters. When she tried to open them, she discovered that they were locked or nailed from the outside. She had been a prisoner she knew, upon the yacht, but the firmness with which the hard wood and iron resisted her efforts gave her for the first time the grim reality of her predicament. A prisoner in the heart of a German forest with no way to turn for help! Where was Cyril? Perhaps after all, her sur-
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