lapped upon the chinky
walls. In palaces and in earls' mansions coloured tiles, wrought into a
mosaic, formed a clean and pretty pavement; but the common flooring of
the time was clay, baked dry with the heat of winter evenings and summer
noons. The only articles of furniture always in the hall were wooden
benches; some of which, especially the _high settle_ or seat of the
chieftain, boasted cushions, or at least a rug.

While the hungry crowd, fresh from woodland and furrow, were lounging
near the fire or hanging up their weapons on the pegs and hooks that
jutted from the wall, a number of slaves, dragging in a long, flat,
heavy board, placed it on movable legs, and spread on its upper half a
handsome cloth. Then were arranged with other utensils for the meal some
flattish dishes, baskets of ash-wood for holding bread, a scanty
sprinkling of steel knives shaped like our modern razors, platters of
wood, and bowls for the universal broth.

The ceremony of "laying the board," as the Old English phrased it, being
completed, the work of demolition began. Great round cakes of
bread--huge junks of boiled bacon--vast rolls of broiled eel--cups of
milk--horns of ale--wedges of cheese--lumps of salt butter--and smoking
piles of cabbages and beans, melted like magic from the board under the
united attack of greasy fingers and grinding jaws. Kneeling slaves
offered to the lord and his honoured guests long skewers or spits, on
which steaks of beef or venison smoked and sputtered, ready for the
hacking blade.

Poultry, too, and game of every variety, filled the spaces of the upper
board; but the crowd of _loaf-eaters_, as old English domestics were
suggestively called, saw little of these daintier kinds of food, except
the naked bones. Nor did they much care, if, to their innumerable
hunches of bread, they could add enough pig to appease their hunger.
Hounds, sitting eager-eyed by their masters, snapped with sudden jaws at
scraps of fat flung to them, or retired into private life below the
board with some sweet bone that fortune sent them.

The solid part of the banquet ended with the washing of hands, performed
for the honoured occupants of the high settle by officious slaves. The
board was then dragged out of the hall; the loaf-eaters slunk away to
have a nap in the byre, or sat drowsily in corners of the hall; and the
drinking began. During the progress of the meal, Welsh ale had flowed
freely in horns or vessels of twisted g