A MANOR HOUSE IN DEER LAND. 169 



The very polish of the oak is lustreless, it 

 is smooth, but does not reflect. Old shadowy 

 days of rapier and ruff, armour and petronel ; 

 days when the Spanish Main was on all men's 

 lips ; of Sir Francis Drake, whose cannon 

 sound still in the hottest hours of summer ; 

 old shadowy days, melted into night three 

 centuries since, have left a little of their 

 twilight in this hall. There is a dream in 

 every chair ; romance grown richer with 

 age like the colour of the oak — forth from 

 the iron-studded door goes the cavalier and 

 his lady a-hawking. 



As the men who built tins chamber lived 

 their time in the forest and on the moors, 

 thumbing no weary books, so it is right that to 

 this hour it should be filled with the spoils and 

 curiosities of the woods. A reddish-brown 

 marten-cat, or pine-marten, trapped by chance 

 thirty years ago, is in one case, the very last 

 of the pine-martens, once hunted. This 

 creature, extinct in Southern England, may 

 often be seen in museums, brought perhaps 



