the lagoon, perhaps three hundred
yards from the wall, and the green lawns went down half-way to it.
Beyond this--except of course for the space occupied by the lagoon
itself--stretched the gray, desolate sand.

Beyond the wall the inlet widened rapidly, and the rolling waves gave
the impression of considerable depth. I had never seen a more favorable
place for a sportsman's home. Besides the deep-sea fishing beyond the
rock wall, it was easy to believe that the lagoon itself was the home of
countless schools of such hard-fighting game-fish as loved such craggy
seas. The lagoon was fretful and rough from the flowing tide at that
moment, offering no inducements to a boatman, but I surmised at once
that it would be still as a lake in the hours that the tide ebbed. The
shore was a favorable place for the swift-winged shorebirds that all
sportsmen love--plover and curlew and their fellows. And the mossy,
darkling forest, teeming with turkey and partridge, stretched just
behind.

Yet the whole effect was not only of beauty. I stood still, and tried to
puzzle it out. The atmosphere talked of in great country houses is more
often imagined than really discerned; but if such a thing exists, Kastle
Krags was literally steeped in it. Like Macbeth's, the castle has a
pleasant seat--and yet it moved you, in queer ways, under the skin.

I am not, unfortunately, a particularly sensitive man. Working from the
ground up, I have been so busy preserving the keen edges of my senses
that I have quite neglected my sensibilities. I couldn't put my finger
on the source of the strange, mental image that the place invoked; and
the thing irritated and disturbed me. The subject wasn't worth a busy
man's time, yet I couldn't leave it alone.

The house was not different from a hundred houses scattered through the
south. It was larger than most of the larger colonial homes, and
constructed with greater artistry. If it had any atmosphere at all,
other than comfort and beauty, it was of cheer. Yet I didn't feel
cheerful, and I didn't know why. I felt even more sobered than when the
moss of the cypress trees swept over my head. But soon I thought I saw
the explanation.

The image of desolation and eery bleakness had its source in the
wide-stretching sands, the unforgettable sea beyond, and particularly
the inlet, or lagoon, up above the natural dam of stone. The rocks that
enclosed the lagoon would have been of real interest to a geologist--to
me