Town, hung a straggler building or two, lonely in importance, or consequential in some trifling pomp of land; at the point of cliff on Old Harbour House side, a low, pursy lighthouse wheezed at night a[Pg 2] yellow gleam that was a home-greeting or God-speed to some five score fishermen who dredged in these and further waters; and on the brow confronting the lighthouse a venerable windmill revolved its vans against the sky.

[Pg 2]

It has been said that Old Harbour House stood. The house takes its place as a beauty of the past. On Christmas Eve 1832, fire reduced it to a few blackened walls. All through the long night the flames made a wild, grand show; sea and land were illuminated for leagues and leagues. Out of the ashes of the beautiful building sprang that commonplace phoenix, the local poet, who celebrated the one tradition of Old Harbour Town in a copy of rhymes, of which the first verse should be found imprinted on the title-page of this book.

The house, or at least the front of it, was built after a design by Inigo Jones. The pediment was perforated by a circular window glazed with a casement whose frame resembled the spokes of a ship's wheel. A variety of antique symbolism resembling the hideous sculptures which sometimes close the chapters in books of the seventeenth century, under-ran the eaves. The tall, narrow windows gleamed blackly amidst the skeletons of the winter, or the coloured embroidery of the[Pg 3] summer creepers. The hall door was noble and hospitable in expanse. A carriage drive swept from it on either hand the oval lawn to a handsome gate whose supports were crowned by the arms of the Actons on the one hand and the arms of a family into which one of the Actons had married on the other hand.

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One bright morning in April in that memorable year 1805, Captain Charles Acton, R.N. (retired), stood on his lawn in front of the house watching a gardener who was at work at a flower-bed. He was a slightly-built but tall, very gentleman-like man, one of the last in a crowd to be picked out as a seafarer. He was pale, his nose aquiline, lips thin, and the expression of the mouth firm. He was dressed in a frill shirt, loose cravat of white cambric, red-striped waistcoat, long green coat with a high collar and small cuffs, tight breeches to the ankle buttoned to the middle of the thigh, and top-boots; a rather low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat sat somewhat cocked on his head. His hair was long, without powder, and tied a little way down the back in a sort of tail.

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