Often I have longed to withdraw for a time to one of those lonely watch-towers to “think things out.” We Crawfords have never been able to see a really solitary spot without wanting it for our own. A certain empty tomb lost among the Umbrian hills, with the sun turning the red rock to gold and the wild camomile swaying its yellow blossoms in the breeze over the doorway, has been a haven of my spirit through many a breathless, over-peopled hour. I could fly there in mind, for days at a time, into an atmosphere of such still liberty as is only granted to disembodied souls. My dear brother Marion could never resist the call of fortressed solitudes. The story of how he became the master of San Niccola in Calabria is too characteristic not to be told in this connection. San Niccola is an Angevin castle, with walls twenty feet thick in places, perched on the rocks over an inhospitable little bay on the coast of Calabria, a bay too small and shallow to permit of sailing vessels being anchored inside its natural breakwater of tumbled stones. Marion often sailed thither, and, leaving the yacht outside, would scramble on shore and linger for hours in the shade of the huge pile, weaving new stories and calling up pictures of the days when the cry would ring along the coast that a Saracen sail was in sight, and the inhabitants, snatching up whatever they could carry, raced for the nearest tower of refuge. San Niccola looks like a huge dark monolith, wide at the base and tapering slightly towards its truncated summit. It contained but two apartments, a vast square space, without windows, for animals below, and one great hall, as sparsely windowed as possible, above. In this it resembles most of its fellows along the coast, where “Carlo d’Angiò,” still almost a living personality to the people, planted them, at short distances from one another, for this very purpose.
It was a roasting hot day in August; the felucca (this was before my brother bought the _Alda_) was swinging at anchor in deep water, and the “padroni,” Marion and my sister-in-law, were sitting on the rocks in the shade, after lunch—the hour when most people go to sleep, but always a particularly inspiring one to him and responsible for many of his quaint whims. Suddenly he jumped up and announced that he needed a walk—he would go to the town—a tiny hamlet some miles distant—and buy—I forget what—fresh eggs for the morrow’s breakfast, I think. Would Bessie like to come?