a-Wood of Graden-Easter, and making a
long stage, reached it about sundown on a wild September day.

The country, I have said, was mixed sand-hill and links; _links_ being a
Scottish name for sand which has ceased drifting and become more or less
solidly covered with turf. The pavilion stood on an even space; a little
behind it, the wood began in a hedge of elders huddled together by the
wind; in front, a few tumbled sand-hills stood between it and the sea.
An outcropping of rock had formed a bastion for the sand, so that there
was here a promontory in the coast-line between two shallow bays; and
just beyond the tides, the rock again cropped out and formed an islet of
small dimensions but strikingly designed. The quicksands were of great
extent at low water, and had an infamous reputation in the country.
Close inshore, between the islet and the promontory, it was said they
would swallow a man in four minutes and a half; but there may have been
little ground for this precision. The district was alive with rabbits,
and haunted by gulls which made a continual piping about the pavilion.
On summer days the outlook was bright, and even gladsome; but at sundown
in September, with a high wind, and a heavy surf rolling in close along
the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disaster.
A ship beating to windward on the horizon, and a huge truncheon of wreck
half-buried in the sands at my feet, completed the innuendo of the
scene.

The pavilion--it had been built by the last proprietor, Northmour's
uncle, a silly and prodigal virtuoso--presented little signs of age. It
was two stories in height, Italian in design, surrounded by a patch of
garden in which nothing had prospered but a few coarse flowers, and
looked, with its shuttered windows, not like a house that had been
deserted, but like one that had never been tenanted by man. Northmour
was plainly from home; whether, as usual, sulking in the cabin of his
yacht, or in one of his fitful and extravagant appearances in the world
of society, I had, of course, no means of guessing. The place had an air
of solitude that daunted even a solitary like myself; the wind cried in
the chimneys with a strange and wailing note; and it was with a sense of
escape, as if I were going indoors, that I turned away and, driving my
cart before me, entered the skirts of the wood.

The Sea-Wood of Graden had been planted to shelter the cultivated fields
behind, and check the encr