Eden Phillpotts/The American Prisoner

The novel concerns an English woman who lives at [Fox Tor]? farm, and an American captured during the [American War of Independance]? and held at the prison at Princetown on Dartmoor.

The heroine's father, Maurice Malherb, is based on [Thomas Windeatt]?.

In the novel Malherb is a miscreant who destroys Childe's tomb and beats his servant. He is portrayed more as a victim of his own bad temper rather than an unremittingly vicious sadist.

Malherb is introduced as the younger son of a noble family and he builds the Fox Tor house to be the impressive gentleman's residence suggested by William Crossing rather than the humble cottage which it actually is.