Automatically to my mind
sprang the lines of the poem:
Far from all brother-men, in the weird of the fen,
With God's creatures I bide, 'mid the birds that I ken;
Where the winds ever dree, where the hymn of the sea
Brings a message of peace from the ocean to me.
Not a soul was visible about the premises; there was no sound of human
activity and no dog barked. Nayland Smith drew a long breath, glanced
back along the way we had come, then went on, following the wall, I
beside him, until we came to the gate. It was unfastened, and we
walked up the stone path through a wilderness of weeds. Four windows
of the house were visible, two on the ground floor and two above.
Those on the ground floor were heavily boarded up, those above, though
glazed, boasted neither blinds nor curtains. Cragmire Tower showed not
the slightest evidence of tenancy.
We mounted three steps and stood before a tremendously massive oaken
door. An iron bell-pull, ancient and rusty, hung on the right of the
door, and Smith, giving me an odd glance, seized the ring and tugged
it.
From somewhere within the building answered a mournful clangour, a
cracked and toneless jangle, which, seeming to echo through empty
apartments, sought and found an exit apparently by way of one of the
openings in the round tower; for it was from above our heads that the
noise came to us.
It died away, that eerie ringing--that clanging so dismal that it
could chill my heart even then with the bright sunlight streaming
down out of the blue; it awoke no other response than the mournful cry
of the sea-gull circling over our heads.
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