obliged to shut themselves up for a day or two and depend for their supply of water entirely on what they could get within their walls. [Illustration: _No. 234. Court of a House of the Fifteenth Century._] The cut here given (No. 234) is a remarkably good and perfect representation of the exterior, looking towards the court, of the domestic buildings. The door on the ground floor to the right is probably, to judge by the position of the windows, the entrance to the hall. The steps leading to the first floor are outside the wall, an arrangement which is not uncommon in the existing examples of houses of this period in England. We have also here the open gallery round the chambers on the first floor, which is so frequently met with in our houses of the fifteenth century. It is probable that within the door at the top of the external flight of steps, as here represented, a short staircase led up to the floor on which the chambers were situated. Perhaps it may have been a staircase into the gallery, as the opening round the corner to the right seems to be a door from the gallery into the chambers. [Illustration: _No. 235. A Knight at the Door._] In another illumination in the same manuscript (cut No. 235), a knight is represented knocking at the door of a house into which he seeks admittance. The plain knocker and the ring will be recognised at once by all who have been accustomed to examine the original doors still remaining in so many of our old buildings, but why the person who thus signifies his wish to enter should hold the ring with his right hand, and the knocker with his left, is not very clear. The knocker, instead of being plain, as in this cut, was often very ornamental. This is, of course, the outer door of the house, and our readers will not overlook the loophole and the small window through which the person who knocked might be examined, and, if necessary, interrogated, before the door was opened to him.