The old-fashioned brick house--with sharp, peaked roof, turreted chimneys, and gable window looking down in front upon the clumsily clustered columns that supported the arched portico--was built upon a rocky knoll, of which nature laid the foundation and art increased the height; and, around and above it, towered a dense grove of ancient trees that shut out the glare of the sea and effectually screened the mansion from observation. The damp walls were heavily draped with the sombre verdure of ivy, whose ambitious tendrils clambered to the cleft chimney-tops, and peered impertinently over the broad stone window-sills, whence the indignant housemaid remorselessly sheared them away as often as their encroachments grew perceptible. In the rear of the house, and toward the west, stretched orchard, vegetable garden, vineyard, and wheat-field, whose rolling green waves seemed almost to break against the ruddy trunks of cedars that clothed the hillside. To the left and north lay low, marshy, meadow land, covered with rank grass and frosted with saline incrustations; while south of the building extended spacious grounds, studded here and there with noble groups of deodars, Norway spruce, and various ornamental shrubs, and bounded by a tall impenetrable hedge of osage orange. Before the house, which faced the ocean and fronted east, the lawn sloped gently down to a terrace surmounted by a granite balustrade; and just beyond, supported by stone piers on the golden sands, stood an octagonal boat-house, built in the Swiss style, with red-tiled roof, and floored with squares of white and black marble, whence a flight of steps led to the little boat chained to one of the rocky piers. Along the entire length of the terrace a line of giant poplars lifted their aged, weather-beaten heads, high above all surrounding objects,--ever on the _qui vive_, looking seaward,--trim and erect as soldiers on dress parade, and defiant of gales that had shorn them of many boughs, and left ghastly scars on their glossy limbs. Tradition whispered, with bated breath, that in the dim dawn of colonial settlement a rude log hut had been erected here by pirates, who came ashore to bury their ill-gotten booty, and rumors were rife of bloody deeds and midnight orgies,--all of which sprang into more vigorous circulation, when, in laying the foundations of the boat-house piers, an iron pot containing a number of old French and Spanish coins was dug out of the shells and sand.