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 [Pg 21]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.

[Pg 21]

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 they were merely bleak and forbidding, craggy and gray and cold. Unquestionably they contained many caverns and crevices that would be worth exploring. And I was a little amazed at the fury with which the incoming waves beat against and over the rocky barrier. They came [Pg 22]with a veritable ferocity, and the sea beyond seemed hardly rough enough to justify them.

[Pg 22]

Grover Nealman himself met me when I turned on to the level, gravel driveway. There was nothing about him in keeping with that desolate driveway. A familiar type, he looked the gentleman and sportsman that he was. Probably the man was forty-four or forty-five years old, but he was not the type that yields readily to middle-age. Nealman unquestionably still considered himself a young man, and he believed it heartily enough to convince his friends. Self-reliant, inured to power and influence, somewhat aristocratic, he could not yield himself to the admission of the march of the years. He was of medium height, rather thickly built, with round 

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