our household
effects that were worth the trouble and expense of transport.

CHAPTER II. OF THE STRANGE MANNER IN WHICH A TENANT CAME TO CLOOMBER

Branksome might have appeared a poor dwelling-place when compared with
the house of an English squire, but to us, after our long residence in
stuffy apartments, it was of regal magnificence.

The building was broad-spread and low, with red-tiled roof,
diamond-paned windows, and a profusion of dwelling rooms with
smoke-blackened ceilings and oaken wainscots. In front was a small lawn,
girt round with a thin fringe of haggard and ill grown beeches, all
gnarled and withered from the effects of the sea-spray. Behind lay the
scattered hamlet of Branksome-Bere--a dozen cottages at most--inhabited
by rude fisher-folk who looked upon the laird as their natural
protector.

To the west was the broad, yellow beach and the Irish Sea, while in all
other directions the desolate moors, greyish-green in the foreground
and purple in the distance, stretched away in long, low curves to the
horizon.

Very bleak and lonely it was upon this Wigtown coast. A man might
walk many a weary mile and never see a living thing except the white,
heavy-flapping kittiwakes, which screamed and cried to each other with
their shrill, sad voices.

Very lonely and very bleak! Once out of sight of Branksome and there
was no sign of the works of man save only where the high, white tower of
Cloomber Hall shot up, like a headstone of some giant grave, from amid
the firs and larches which girt it round.

This great house, a mile or more from our dwelling, had been built by a
wealthy Glasgow merchant of strange tastes and lonely habits, but at
the time of our arrival it had been untenanted for many years, and stood
with weather-blotched walls and vacant, staring windows looking blankly
out over the hill side.

Empty and mildewed, it served only as a landmark to the fishermen, for
they had found by experience that by keeping the laird's chimney and the
white tower of Cloomber in a line they could steer their way through
the ugly reef which raises its jagged back, like that of some sleeping
monster, above the troubled waters of the wind-swept bay.

To this wild spot it was that Fate had brought my father, my sister,
and myself. For us its loneliness had no terrors. After the hubbub and
bustle of a great city, and the weary task of upholding appearances upon
a slender income, there was a grand, soul-soothin