Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1904-10-15 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

CHAPTER VII. ® i The Red House. I 0 1  e-s-e-e-o-o-0-_e_e_..-e__9  Of all the lonely habitations in the eastern part of Essex, the Red House was the loneliest and least attractive. It did not stand, Like Heatherstone Hall, on the edge of the marshes with fair and fertile country stretching to the west of it. It stood in the very centre of a desolate tract of land, on a small rocky eminence that was like an island in a sea of marshes. To east and west and south and north tne land lay flat and uninhabited, save for an isolated cottage, the home of some watchman or ferryman. Not a tree broke the monotony.  6n the eastern horizon lay the sea. On the west, six miles away, the rising ground showed up dim and indistinct, like a miniature range of mountains.  A straight road commenced at the cound and ran west between two creeks. It was closed in on either side with high hanks of turf, for with spring tides and an easterly wind the water rose above the level of it, and but for this protection would have flooded it a foot deep from end to end. This road, constructed at enormous expense by the man who built the house, ran inland for six miles, and then cut at right angles into the same road that ran past Heatherstone Hall—a wide causeway that had been built in the time of the Romans, and had been maintained ever since as a communication between the north and south of Essex. It was very little used, for in its whole course of twenty miles it scarcely touched on half a dozen villages, and a mauler road which ran parallel to it, but several miles inland, was the main highway into Suffolk. It was not surprising that the Red Rouse had been unoccupied for many years. It had been built by a man who had been interested in the oyster fisheries, and who thought it would be '4l to be near the spot where he had  e  invested him money. Ile lived there for ten years, and then hanged himself from one of the upper windows facing the sea. He was a bachelor, and it was surmised that the awful loneliness of the place had unhinged his mind, for his business had prospered exceedingly, and there was absolutely no other reason for his suicide. The house itself was as unattractive as the scenery that surrounded it—a great, bare building, badly constructed of very inferior bricks. Behind it lay numerous outhouses and sheds, and a brick stable large enough to accommodate a dozen horses and as many carts or carriages. A tarred fence some 300 hundred yards in circumference enclosed a piece of ground which had once been a garden. The knoll, on which the house stood, was about ten acres in extent, and was supposed to be the site of an old Roman camp. A faint square outline of trench and rampart, plainly visible to the keen eye of the antiquarian, lent some colour to this supposition. And it was, at any rate, a commanding situation, such as might well have been chosen for military purposes. The two creeks ran round either side of the knoll, and joining a couple of hundred yards further on, spread out into the wide waters of the estuary. The place would have made an almost inaccessible fortress.  To this lonely spot, after fourteen years of hell in a convict prison, and eight years of feverish work in France, came John Porteous, now known to the world as William Jordison.  The hard work and simple fare of prison life had broadened his shoulders and strengthened his muscles. But his hair was as white as snow, and the deep lines on his rugged face spoke eloquently of the mental anguish he had suffered. For there had been more than the degradation of his punishment to sear John Porteous' mind. There had been the daily, almost hourly, thought of the woman who had betrayed him. There had been the secret locked tight within his breast, and which had gnawed at his heart and brain till the one was eaten away and the other was inflamed with disease.  John Porteous had gone into the prison a man who had indeed lost his honour, but who still retained many admirable traits of a fine and gentlemanly nature. He came out of it a wild and ravenging beast, insensible, save for the love he still bore his son, to every passion and emotion but revenge. A callous, cold-hearted ruffian, a monomaniac, who wanted only one thing in this world, and whose brain would never reA until he found it.  When he left Portland he had a few pounds in his pocket, and he cast about in his mind bow he could earn his living and make money. He did not want money for the pleasures that gold can buy, but because money is power, and without it he would be powerless to accomplish his task. He spent several weeks looking for a job that offered some prospects in the future. He was a man of fine commercial capabilities, and with a few hundred pounds of capital he could doubtless have soon built up a business. But he was handicapped by want of money, and he realised that he had to start at the very bottom. The idea of a clerkship was distasteful to him. He knew only too well how few chances came to a clerk, and how the most splendid abilities have rusted for years at the office desk. - - -  He picked up an odd job here and there, and kept himself alive, travelling about the country on foot from place to place. During this time he made diligent enquiries for his 601 a. He had  T  , / \ / ‘ . . \ , . °•••-t, . _., , • /( li• ~..4-1...„,„„ ii, ' 7 5,.. r _.".."•••J ........ ;.4411....1t, ~,..... ~. ••:.% ... ' ...-L__., N • fke, E::_..;_,-,-",-,..\\ - If N 6 Y Zt.- _ .., ... • cut.im