India, May 1 -- Driving north on Route 1 headed toward Acadia National Park, I'd press my nose to the glass as soon as we passed the downtown drag of Camden, Maine, and hope to catch a glimpse of the famed "castle by the sea." Behind a row of hulking old trees, on a grassy slope with a distant view of Penobscot Bay, sits an 1887 Queen Anne confection in stone and black, a nameplate in the corner reading NORUMBEGA in gilt letters. It captures the imagination on sight: soaring arches, leaded glass windows with their neat little panes, a turret on one side, and a port-cochere on the other. It's the kind of mysterious old house an orphan might be spirited away to at the start of a turn-of-the-century children's novel or, should the night be d...