. The left wing
contained the kitchen, pantry, scullery, bakehouse, brew-house, etc.;
and servants' bedrooms above. The right wing the stables, coach-houses,
cattle-sheds, and several bedrooms. The main building of the hall,
the best bedrooms, and the double staircase, leading up to them
in horse-shoe form from the hall: and, behind the hall, on the
ground-floor, there was a morning-room, in which several of the Squire's
small tenants were even now preparing for supper by drinking tea, and
eating cakes made in rude imitation of the infant Saviour. On the right
of the hall were the two drawing-rooms en suite, and on the left was
the remarkable room into which the host now handed Miss Carden, and Mr.
Coventry followed. This room had been, originally, the banqueting-hall.
It was about twenty feet high, twenty-eight feet wide, and fifty feet
long, and ended in an enormous bay window, that opened upon the lawn.
It was entirely paneled with oak, carved by old Flemish workmen, and
adorned here and there with bold devices. The oak, having grown old in
a pure atmosphere, and in a district where wood and roots were generally
burned in dining-rooms, had acquired a very rich and beautiful color,
a pure and healthy reddish brown, with no tinge whatever of black; a
mighty different hue from any you can find in Wardour Street. Plaster
ceiling there was none, and never had been. The original joists, and
beams, and boards, were still there, only not quite so rudely fashioned
as of old; for Mr. Raby's grandfather had caused them to be planed and
varnished, and gilded a little in serpentine lines. This woodwork above
gave nobility to the room, and its gilding, though worn, relieved the
eye agreeably.

The further end was used as a study, and one side of it graced with
books, all handsomely bound: the other side, with a very beautiful organ
that had an oval mirror in the midst of its gilt dummy-pipes. All this
made a cozy nook in the grand room.

What might be called the dining-room part, though rich, was rather
somber on ordinary occasions; but this night it was decorated
gloriously. The materials were simple--wax-candles and holly; the effect
was produced by a magnificent use of these materials. There were eighty
candles, of the largest size sold in shops, and twelve wax pillars,
five feet high, and the size of a man's calf; of these, four only
were lighted at present. The holly was not in sprigs, but in enormous
branches, that filled