The wildest wind that ever blew leaped off the edge of the hollow and went shrieking up the black sky, but never struck down at the squat gray house below.

It was a good-sized house, wide-spread, and all on one floor, and though it was only built of wood it looked very strong and lasting, and to my thinking very comfortable.

Coming towards it from the front, it looked as though a great ship had run head on into the hollow and sunk partly into the ground, leaving her stern high and dry.

For the front was in fact built up of fragments of an East Indiaman, and the windows were her bulging stern windows, carved and ornamented, though now all weathered to an ashen gray, and on each side of the doorway ran a stout carved wooden railing which had come from a ship's poop.
When I had done staring at all this, I went rather doubtfully to the door, with my eyes playing about all round, for the Le Marchants, as I have said, did not favour visitors, and I was not sure of my welcome.
There seemed no one about, however, and at last I summoned courage to knock gently on the door, which was of thick, heavy wood of a kind quite new to me, and had once been polished.
"Hello, then! Who's there ?" said a voice inside.
I waited, but no one came.

It was no good talking through a door, so I lifted the latch doubtfully and put in my head.
It was a large wide room, larger than Jeanne Falla's kitchen at Beaumanoir, and though there was no fern-bed--and it was the first living-room I had seen without one--there was a look of great warmth and comfort about it.
There was a fire of driftwood smouldering in a wide clay chimneyplace, and a sweet warm smell of wood smoke in the air.