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of dangers and menaces which will not be recounted here, but left to the imagination, for this story concerns itself not with the troubled world they left behind, but with the new world they meant so hopefully to build, if not for all men, since that hope had failed, then for these select few.
    They did not all arrive. Two young men were caught by the military and pressed into the Army, from which they had much ado to escape a year later. One old man was knifed by an older woman as he rested in his sweat in a ditch and closed his eyes for sheer weariness. Three young women were caught and raped by a rabble of peasants, though they were well disguised as pox-ridden crones. When their young, smooth flesh was discovered under their artfully tattered clothing, they were raped again for their deceitfulness, and again for their sweetness and softness, and yet again, upon compulsion, so that they no longer had force to beg for mercy or tears to run down their blubbered cheeks, and then again, and so they died, of suffocation, of fear, of despair, who knows, or who knows if they thought it a merciful release. Their fate was never known by those more fortunate who came to the hidden tower, though rumours of it were rife on the roads. But in those days, so many were undone, these deaths were not remarkable.
    The group who gathered on the crest of Mount Clytie, before making the crossing on the wooden bridge, might fairly have been thought remarkable. They were mud-stained and dishevelled, thinner after the privations of their journey, but full of vigour, their blood beating fiercely with renewed hope. They could not see La Tour Bruyarde (only one of the names of the place) from where they stood, but they were assured by their leader that once across the bridge and over the last natural bastion, they would behold a possible site for an earthly Paradise, a plain watered by swift streams and meandering brooks, in which was a wooded Mount or Mound on which stood their new home, on a site where his own family, throughout the ages, had always had a fortress-retreat.
    This leader, though of noble birth, went by the name of Culvert, since it was a condition of their society that their names should be newly chosen, to signify relinquishment of the old world, and new beginnings in the new. His chief companion was the Lady Roseace. They were a beautiful pair, in the first strength of confident manhood and womanhood. Culvert was above the common height, broadshouldered but lithe; he wore his hair, which was black and gleaming, longer than was fashionable, and it fell in great negligent tresses on his shoulders. His face was strong and smiling, with a full red mouth, both firm and sensuous, and dark eyes under decisive brows. Roseace was slender but full-breasted, and pressed her saddle with firm but ample buttocks. Her hair was also worn freely over her shoulders, though she had only considered it safe to release it from her hood since they came to the summit of Mount Clytie, and she now tossed her head a little from sheer pleasure at the breezy clarity of the air and the empty spaces of rock, snow and green vegetation spread below her. Her face was thoughtful and imperious, her lips firmly arched and her winged brows drawn in a habitual questioning frown. She had in her young life been destined by her parents for an uncongenial husband, and by the Revolutionary Powers for denunciation, summary trial and rapid execution, but she had escaped both parents and gaolers with equal resourcefulness and ruthlessness. On the day when this narrative begins her golden hair was curling and tangled and her skin lightly veiled with a powdering of dust, amongst which glistened diamond drops of sweat.
    Other members of the assembled company were the young Narcisse, pale, gentle and hardly more than a boy, full of tremulous self-doubt and sudden starts of eagerness; the careful Fabian, who had shared Culvert’s student freedoms and had been a voice of caution in