CHAPTER 14The Anchor House is still standing down by the waterfront, a modest mouldering building, grizzled by the sea. Its windows have been boarded up long ago. Its name has been stripped from it. Its paint is seared and cracked, and the weeds are thick on the granite steps that lead to the old front door. I should not like to enter that doorway now, or to hear my footfalls on the bare boards, or to stare into the dusky taproom and see the empty bar, for it was a pleasant place once, not a place of ghosts, and I should rather remember it so.
When Jim Lowes had the Anchor House there was always a row of bowsprits across the way, and the hall always had the odor of ships’ cargoes. You could sit in the taproom with a tumbler of rum and with your coat off if you wished, for the Anchor House
