ONE:The court-yards were thronged with the retainers of the Baron, beguiling the hour until the ceremony called them into the hall. This apartment, which corresponded in magnificence and beauty with the outward appearance of the noble pile, was of an oblong shape. Carved representations of battles adorned the lofty oaken ceiling, and suspended were banners and quarterings of the Sudley and De Boteler families. Ancestral statues of oak, clad in complete armour, stood in niches formed in the thick walls. The heavy linked mail of the Normans, with the close helmet, or skull cap, fastened under the chin, and leaving the face exposed, encased those who represented the early barons of Sudley; while those of a later period were clad in the more convenient, and more beautiful armour of the fourteenth century. The walls were covered with arms, adapted to the different descriptions of soldiers of the period, and arranged so, as each might provide himself with his proper weapons, without delay or confusion.He then turned to the small householders and shop-keepers, dazzling them with visions of Gladstone's free breakfast table��he even invited the more prominent ones to an untaxed breakfast in the Town Hall; whereat the Colonel, at Reuben's instigation, retaliated with a sumptuous dinner, which he said would be within the reach of every farmer when a moderate wheat-tax no longer forced him to undersell his harvests.

---