s
purchased by a rich London banker, who had declared his intention of
coming to live upon it.

That any one rich enough to buy such a property, able to restore such
a costly house, and maintain a style of living proportionate to its
pretensions, should come to reside in the solitude and obscurity of
an Irish county, seemed all but impossible; and when the matter became
assured by the visit of a well-known architect, and afterwards by the
arrival of a troop of workmen, the puzzle then became to guess how it
chanced that the great head of a rich banking firm, the chairman of
this, the director of that, the promoter of Heaven, knows what scores of
industrial schemes for fortune, should withdraw from the great bustle of
life to accept an existence of complete oblivion.

In the little village of Portshandon--which straggled along the beach,
and where, with a few exceptions, none but fishermen and their families
lived--this question was hotly debated; an old half-pay lieutenant, who
by courtesy was called Captain, being at the head of those who first
denied the possibility of the Bramleighs coming at all, and when that
matter was removed beyond a doubt, next taking his stand on the fact
that nothing short of some disaster in fortune, or some aspersion on
character, could ever have driven a man out of the great world to finish
his days in the exile of Ireland.

"I suppose you'll give in at last, Captain Craufurd," said Mrs. Bayley,
the postmistress of Portshandon, as she pointed to a pile of letters and
newspapers all addressed to "Castello," and which more than quadrupled
the other correspondence of the locality.

"I did n't pretend they were not coming, Mrs. Bayley," said he, in the
cracked and cantankerous tone he invariably spoke in. "I simply observed
that I 'd be thankful for any one telling me why they were coming.
That's the puzzle,--why they 're coming?"

"I suppose because they like it, and they can afford it," said she, with
a toss of her head.

"Like it!" cried he, in derision. "Like it! Look out of the window
there beside you, Mrs. Bayley, and say, is n't it a lovely prospect,
that beggarly village, and the old rotten boats, keel uppermost, with
the dead fish and the oyster-shells, and the torn nets, and the dirty
children? Is n't it an elegant sight after Hyde Park and the Queen's
palace?"

"I never saw the Queen's palace nor the other place you talk of, but I
think there's worse towns to live in than P