It stood on the top of a high hill-bleak, solitary. In winter all the winds of heaven raved round it; in summer the happy sunshine rarely touched it. It was, indeed, hemmed in from brightness of any kind, by a dense row of cypresses that grew before the hall-door, and by a barren rock that rose perpendicularly at the back. On clear days one could get from this cold house a grand view of the valley below, nestling in its warmth, and from the road that ran under it people would sometimes look up and wonder at the curious colour of the Red House-such a dark red, sombre, like blood.