instinct, the two companions emerged upon another and much larger
level that seemed as illimitable as the bay. The strong breath of
the ocean lying just beyond the bar and estuary they were now
facing came to them salt and humid as another tide. The nearer
expanse of open water reflected the after-glow, and lightened the
landscape. And between the two wayfarers and the horizon rose,
bleak and startling, the strange outlines of their home.

At first it seemed a ruined colonnade of many pillars, whose base
and pediment were buried in the earth, supporting a long
parallelogram of entablature and cornices. But a second glance
showed it to be a one-storied building, upheld above the Marsh by
numberless piles placed at regular distances; some of them sunken
or inclined from the perpendicular, increasing the first illusion.
Between these pillars, which permitted a free circulation of air,
and, at extraordinary tides, even the waters of the bay itself, the
level waste of marsh, the bay, the surges of the bar, and finally
the red horizon line, were distinctly visible. A railed gallery or
platform, supported also on piles, and reached by steps from the
Marsh, ran around the building, and gave access to the several
rooms and offices.

But if the appearance of this lacustrine and amphibious dwelling
was striking, and not without a certain rude and massive grandeur,
its grounds and possessions, through which the brother and sister
were still picking their way, were even more grotesque and
remarkable. Over a space of half a dozen acres the flotsam and
jetsam of years of tidal offerings were collected, and even guarded
with a certain care. The blackened hulks of huge uprooted trees,
scarcely distinguishable from the fragments of genuine wrecks