he master
of the house would sit in converse with his family or his guests,
enjoying the fresh and cheering breeze, without being fully exposed to
its effects. The porch was universally adopted as a protection to the
large flagged hall called the "house-part," which otherwise might have
been seriously incommoded by the inclement atmosphere of these bleak
districts. On one side of the hall, containing the great fireplace,
was the "guest parlour." Here the best bed was usually fixed; and
here, too, all great "occasions" took place. Births, christenings,
burials--all emanated from, or were accomplished in, this family
chamber. Every member was there transmitted from the cradle to the
grave. The low wide oaken stairs, to the first bending of which an
active individual might have leaped without any such superfluous
media. The naked gallery, with its little quaint doors on each side,
hatched in the usual fashion, this opening into the store-room, that
into the servants' lodging, another into the closet where the choicest
confections were kept. Opposite were the bed-chambers, and at the
extremity of the gallery a ladder generally pointed the way to a loft,
where, amongst heaps of winter stores, dried roots, and other
vegetables, probably reposed one or two of the male servants on a
straw mattress, well fortified from cold by an enormous quilt.

Our description will apply with little variation to all. We love
these deserted mansion-houses that speak of the olden time, its good
cheer and its rude but pleasant intercourse; times and seasons that
are for ever gone, though we crave pardon for indulging in what may
perhaps find little favour in the eyes of this generation, whose hopes
and desires are to the future, who say the past is but the childhood
of our existence: it is gone, and shall not return. But there are yet
some who love to linger on the remnants, the ruins of a former state,
who look at these time-honoured relics but as links that bring them
into closer communion with bygone ages, and would fain live in the
twilight of other years rather than the meridian splendour of the
present. But we must not be seduced any further by these reflections;
our present business concerns the legend whose strange title stands at
the head of this article.

In one of the upper chambers at Buckley Hall before named, and not
long ago, was an iron ring fixed to a strong staple in the wall; and
to this ring a fearful story is still attached