London to John O Groat's. 295 



in the bow-and-arrow times, when the sun had to use 

 the same missiles in shooting its barbed rays into the 

 narrow apertures of old castles- or the stone coffins of 

 fear-hunted knights and ladies, as they might be called. 

 What a monument this to the dispositions and habits 

 of the world, outside and inside, of that early time ! 

 Here is the porter's or warder's lodge just inside the 

 huge gate. To think of a living being with a human 

 soul in him burrowing in such a place ! a big, black 

 sarcophagus without a lid to it, set deep in the solid 

 wall. Then there is the chapel. Compare it with that 

 of Chatsworth, and you may count almost on your 

 fingers the centuries that have intervened between 

 them. It was new-roofed soon after the discovery of 

 America, and perhaps done up to some show of decency 

 and comfort. But how small and rude the pulpit and 

 pews looking like rough-boarded potato-bins ! Here 

 is the great banquet-hall, full to overflowing with the 

 tracks and cross-tracks of that wild, strange life of old. 

 There is a fire-place for you, and the mark in the 

 chimney-back of five hundred Christmas logs. Doubt- 

 less this great stone pavement of a floor was carpeted 

 with straw at these banquets, after the illustrious 

 Becket's pattern. Here is a memento of the feast 

 hanging up at the top of the kitchen ward door; a 

 pair of roughly-forged, rusty handcuffs amalgamated 



