Hard by, a few shards of ruined castle overhang
the sea, a few vaults, and one tall gable honeycombed with windows.
The snow lay on the beach to the tidemark. It was daubed on to the
sills of the ruin: it roosted in the crannies of the rock like
white sea-birds; even on outlying reefs there would be a little
cock of snow, like a toy lighthouse. Everything was grey and white
in a cold and dolorous sort of shepherd's plaid. In the profound
silence, broken only by the noise of oars at sea, a horn was
sounded twice; and I saw the postman, girt with two bags, pause a
moment at the end of the clachan for letters.
It is, perhaps, characteristic of Dunure that none were brought
him.
The people at the public-house did not seem well pleased to see me,
and though I would fain have stayed by the kitchen fire, sent me
'ben the hoose' into the guest-room. This guest-room at Dunure was
painted in quite aesthetic fashion. There are rooms in the same
taste not a hundred miles from London, where persons of an extreme
sensibility meet together without embarrassment. It was all in a
fine dull bottle-green and black; a grave harmonious piece of
colouring, with nothing, so far as coarser folk can judge, to hurt
the better feelings of the most exquisite purist. A cherry-red
half window-blind kept up an imaginary warmth in the cold room, and
threw quite a glow on the floor.
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