Set in the midst of the fenland were buildings of some kind. One thought of barracks in the same enclosure with a martello tower or a powder-magazine, like that in Hyde Park. But two strange landmarks sticking up into the foggy sky altered the character of the flat-roofed structure of grey stone standing in a wide expanse of gravel enclosed by a strong wooden fence, stained with some drab weather-resisting composition, and entered by an imposing pair of spike-topped gates. A wide dyke full of sluggish water girdled the fence. You crossed by a wooden swing-bridge leading to the big gates. When you approached them by the road that branched from the main-road at right-angles, you realised the immense height of two hollow triangular towers of grey-painted steel latts and girders that straddled over the flat roof of the squat stone building—the shorter tower nosing up three hundred feet into the air, and its big brother more than double that height, sheathing its sharp point amongst the leaden-hued clouds, bellying full of moisture sucked up from the North Sea. They looked alive to Bawne in a queer ugly way, throwing out their mile-long antennæ to the supporting poles, linking their metal guy-ropes to solid structures of stone and concrete, like colossal web-spinning insects, half-spider, half-mantis, wholly horrible. And they reminded him of the three tall Wireless masts rearing over the Admiralty at Whitehall, and Marconi House, in the Strand, and the little one that straddled over the telegraph-cabin on Fanshaw’s Flying Ground. And at the remembrance the salt tears overbrimmed his raw and burning eyelids, blotting out the muscular, vigorous backs of the men who walked in front of him, and his throat felt as choky as though he had swallowed a whole bull’s-eye. There was a sharp order to halt, and boots marked time on sandy gravel. A grey-uniformed soldier of the two on guard outside the big spike-topped gates, flanked with a black-and-white sentry-box on either side, brought his bayonet to the slope and challenged sharply. A sergeant-major of the party stepped out and answered; the sentry bellowed: "_Raus!_" And with the ruffle of a side-drum, the gates swung open, the guard turned out of a stone guardhouse within, and the armed party with the prisoner and the boy marched into the gravelled courtyard. The gates shut, and von Herrnung was taken off to a block of buildings distant from the central erection with the Wireless towers. There was a clock over the doorway of the guardhouse. The hands indicated a quarter to four. Bawne, standing shivering in the morning rawness, heard the infantry officer commanding the party say in a loud, harsh voice that the boy was to be kept close and sharply looked after. Then a heavy hand gripped him roughly by the collar, and the voice belonging to the grip shouted: "At the Herr Lieutenant’s orders!"