



Produced by David Clarke, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









  THE PRISONER




  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

  NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO. DALLAS
  ATLANTA. SAN FRANCISCO

  MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

  LONDON. BOMBAY. CALCUTTA
  MELBOURNE

  THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

  TORONTO




  THE PRISONER

  BY

  ALICE BROWN

  AUTHOR OF "MY LOVE AND I," "CHILDREN OF
  EARTH," "ROSE MACLEOD," ETC.




  New York
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1916

  _All rights reserved_


  Copyright, 1916
  By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

  Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1916
  Reprinted June, 1916 July, 1916 Twice August, 1916.




THE PRISONER




I


There could not have been a more sympathetic moment for coming into the
country town--or, more accurately, the inconsiderable city--of Addington
than this clear twilight of a spring day. Anne and Lydia French with
their stepfather, known in domestic pleasantry as the colonel, had hit
upon a perfect combination of time and weather, and now they stood in a
dazed silence, dense to the proffers of two hackmen with the urgency of
twenty, and looked about them. That inquiring pause was as if they had
expected to find, even at the bare, sand-encircled station,