RUINS OF A CASTLE. 213 



been swept off to market. There was some good bread, however, 

 which the carrier had just brought, and milk. "We found a sauce- 

 pan, cleaned it, and scalded the milk, and, stirring in the bread 

 with pepper and salt, soon made a comfortable hot breakfast, 

 greatly to the admiration of our host and the carrier. 



Fine English weather to-day : gleams of warm, thick sunshine 

 alternating with slight showers of rain. The country beautiful ; 

 the road running through a rich, well-watered vale, with the same 

 high, steep hills as yesterday, but now regularly planted with 

 wood to the summits. Before us they fall back, one over another, 

 till they become blue under the thick mists that curl about the 

 tops of the most distant, and then, again, blush red before the sun, 

 when the breeze lifts this veil. 



Seeing a singular ruin a little distance from the road, we went 

 to visit it. It had been a castle, with a church or large Gothic 

 chapel attached. Different parts of it, having received more 

 modern, yet ruinously decayed, timber and noggin additions, were 

 occupied as sheep-stables, granary, and workshop. A moat re- 

 mained about it, enclosing also a court-yard ; and on the opposite 

 side of this from the main structure, was a high, four-gabled tim- 

 ber-house, with a gateway through it, entered across the moat by 

 a bridge, formerly a draw-bridge, and with some remains of a 

 portcullis. The wood-work of the gables, and much of the tim- 

 ber, the heavy brackets and the doorways, were covered with 

 quaint carvings. An interesting history it must have had, yet all 

 we could learn of it was, that it was " farmer 's barn." 



At noon we stopped at a superannuated old stage-coaching 

 house, going at once to the kitchen, which was a large room with 

 heavy beams in the ceiling, from which depended flitches of 

 bacon ; a stone floor, a number of oak benches and tables, rows 

 of pewter mugs hanging about the walls, and a great fireplace 

 and chimney. A stout, driving landlady received our orders ; a 



