"Red Stockings."

At Lyme Hall, Cheshire, the ancient seat of the Leghs, high up
in the wall of the hall is a sombre portrait which by ingenious
mechanism swings out of its frame, a fixture, and gives admittance
to a room on the first floor, or rather affords a means of looking
down into the hall.[1] We mention this portrait more especially
because it has been supposed that Scott got his idea here of
the ghostly picture which figures in _Woodstock_. A
_bona-fide_ hiding-place, however, is to be seen in another
part of the mansion in a very haunted-looking bedroom called "the
Knight's Chamber," entered through a trap-door in the floor of
a cupboard, with a short flight of steps leading into it.

[Footnote 1: A large panel in the long gallery of Hatfield can be
pushed aside, giving a view into the great hall, and at Ockwells
and other ancient mansions this device may also be seen.]

Referring to Scott's novel, a word may be said about Fair Rosamond's
famous "bower" at the old palace of Woodstock, surely the most
elaborate and complicated hiding-place ever devised. The ruins
of the labyrinth leading to the "bower" existed in Drayton's
time, who described them as "vaults, arched and walled with stone
and brick, almost inextricably wound within one another, by which,
if at any time her [Rosamond's] lodging were laid about by the
Queen, she might easily avoid peril imminent, and, if need be, by
secret issues take the air abroad many furlongs about Woodstock."

[Illustration: STAIRCASE, BROUGHTON HALL]

In a survey taken in 1660, it is stated that foundation signs
remained about a bow-shot southwest of the gate: "_The form
and circuit both of the place and ruins show it to have been a
house of one pile, and probably was filled with secret places
of recess and avenues to hide or convey away such persons as
were not willing to be found if narrowly sought after._"

Ghostly gambols, such as those actually practised upon the
Parliamentary Commissioners at the old palace of Woodstock, were
for years carried on without detection by the servants at the old
house of Hinton-Ampner, Hampshire; and when it was pulled down
in the year 1797, it became very obvious how the mysteries, which
gave the house the reputation of being haunted, were managed,
for numerous secret stairs and passages, not known to exist were
brought to light which had offered peculiar facilities for the
deception. About the middle of the eighteenth century the