circumstances now it was a perfect mystery; but when it struck, then it showed what a clock with good, strong, healthy works could do. Its accuracy, too, was a proverb. The church and town clocks deferred to it, and all minor timepieces and watches were set by it most humbly. THE interior, however, was the enigma. The large gilt figures, on strong side of Tregarrow. We will a dark ground, would have made the enter whilst the yeoman and his note of time difficult under the most guest are shaking off the snow from favourable their shoes in the entrance hall. On the left of this was a room with a blazing fire in its large grate, which showed cheerfully through the half-open door; but it had, nevertheless, a stiff, stately, unsocial look. This was evidently the apartment which had been offered up as a temple to the grand piano. A little farther, on the same side, was a smaller and cosier room a perfect little snuggery. This was the dame's" bowdwoir," as her spouse called it; a dear little sanctuary suggestive of home meetings, home talk, and home affections. Opposite the door was an oak staircase, very broad and very massive, but very dark also and very slippery the scene of many a fall, and the cause of many a bruise- for the yeoman considered carpets aristocratic, and would have the stairs left in the nakedness of their native oak. In a dusty corner at the foot of the staircase stood an old clock. In the obscurity of this position, the face of this horologe was quite an VOL. XCI. On the right, a large door in the wainscot partition opened into the chief room. In fact this was the interior; here the interior life was passed; here, too, was the place of the hearthstone, and that made it sacred in Guy Penrice's eyes. The first perception of the interior was pleasant certainly. A genial warmth took possession at once of mind and body. The cold was completely conquered here; not only conquered, but annihilated. The thought of it even was subdued. Standing there, one looked out on the heaps of snow through the windows as though it were a picture of a winter in Russia. The warmth reigned supreme; it had things all its own way; it swept even into odd cran 1 He nies and corners, leaving not a which had undoubtedly once shod chilly spot; and if a blast of cold the hoof of Dobbin the ploughcame through an open door, it was horse. Old Penrice rather paraded at once seized and whirled and his superstition, and prided himself sucked into the maelstrom of heat. on the efficacy of the talisman. Servant girls as they came in ceased used to boast that old Jenny Giant to blow their fingers; servant men could never cross his threshold ; to stamp their feet or beat their which was true enough, as all the bodies a few minutes before that dogs had been trained to make an hearth were enough. 'Twas a glori- onslaught on her the instant she made ous hearth that; no scanty starveling the attempt. thing half-choked with bricks, or just built a few feet into the wall, but a large-hearted, open-armed hearth, which thrust itself well out on the floor, and seemed to invite all to come there and be warm. The apartment itself was neither exactly hall nor kitchen, but had somewhat the character of each. Jonathan Oldbuck might have called it the symposium; for there the yeoman, his family, and dependants, sat down The fire, too, was worthy of the to the daily meals, there were the hearth. It would have kindled the evening gatherings, and there were devotion even of a fire-worshipper. held the feasts and family meetings. It was a perfect structure. All the The yeoman said he did not care elements of a fire were there, all whether 'twere hall or kitchenscientifically piled and arranged. 'twas the place of the hearthstone, There was a layer of motts, as the and that was enough for him. All stumps of old trees are called in the the culinary processes had, however, West, another of coal, then came a been removed from hence, as an pile of peat, and over all would lie open door showed a second kitchen, the dry crackling faggots. The fire where a large grate and a still took its character from the element glowing oven seemed to have been which predominated at the time; fully employed of late. As a furnow it glowed bright, strong, and ther proof of disfranchisement as steady in the motts and coals-now a kitchen, the dressers and the burnt more dull and heavily with the peat, and then as it caught the sticks of the faggots, its flames would blaze and roar up the chimney. That old chimney, too, black and grimy with the smoke of centuries, looked like the crater of an old volcano, as the columns of smoke and flame whirled up it, clouding for the time the bit of clear bright sky above. pewter, the glory of a farmhouse, had been displaced by a curious piece of furniture; it was, like everything else, of dark oak, and in shape was part cabinet, part press, part book-shelf, or rather a union of all. On the ground shelf stood a cavalry helmet with long horse hair plume, a breastplate, and broadsword, all highly burnished, seemingly a most impertinent pretence The mantelpiece was of dark oak in such a place; but old Penrice without carving or ornament, un- cherished most religiously these reless that horse-shoe nailed on the miniscences of his having belonged front of it could be called one. We to the yeomanry, and of his having grieve to reveal this weakness of gone out when the country called our yeoman, though he certainly made no attempt to conceal it. The horse-shoe was not placed with any cheat-the-devil compromise in an obscure corner or crevice, but stood well out in front; nor was it a small shoe such as might have fallen from Lilian's filly, but a good substantial piece of iron him. The shelf above held implements of a service much more in accordance with the genius loci-a punch-bowl of the old grey dragon pattern which had evidently seen good service and owed its present entirety to one or two rivets; a plain silver tankard, and the cup of buffalo's horn flanking it on either |