aware of his danger, escaped by the chamber-window, while the knight expected to catch him by entering at the hall door. The juxtaposition of hall and chamber is here shown very plainly. In another chapter of the same romances, the king takes Lancelot into a chamber to talk with him apart, while his knights wait for them in the hall; this is pictorially represented in an illumination copied in the accompanying cut (No. 83), which shows exactly the relative position of the hall and chamber. The door here is probably intended for that which led from the hall into the chamber. [Illustration: _No. 83. The Knights in waiting._] We see from continual allusions that an ordinary house, even among men of wealth, had usually only one chamber, which served as his sleeping-room, and as the special apartment of the female portion of the household--the lady and her maids, while the hall was employed indiscriminately for cooking, eating and drinking, receiving visitors, and a variety of other purposes, and at night it was used as a common sleeping-room. These arrangements, and the construction of the house, varied according to the circumstances of the locality and the rank of the occupiers. Among the rich, a stable did not form part of the house, but its site was often occupied by the kitchen, which was almost always placed close to the hall. Among the higher classes other chambers were built, adjacent to the chief chamber, or to the hall, though in larger mansions they sometimes occupied a tower or separate building adjacent. The form, however, which the manor-house generally took was a simple oblong square. A seal of the thirteenth century, attached to a deed by which, in June, 1272, William Moraunt grants to Peter Picard an acre of land in the parish of Otteford in Kent, furnishes us with a representation of William Moraunt’s manor-house. It is a simple square building, with a high-pitched roof, as appears always to have been the case in the early English houses, and a chimney. The hall door, it will be observed, opens outwardly, as is the case in the preceding cuts, which was the ancient Roman manner of opening of the outer door of the house; it may be added that it was the custom to leave the hall door or _huis_ (_ostium_) always open by day, as a sign of hospitality. It will also be observed that there is a curious coincidence in the form of chimney with the cuts from the illuminated manuscript. We must not overlook another circumstance in these delineations,--the position of the chimney, which is usually over the chamber, and not over the hall. Fireplaces in the wall and chimneys were first introduced in the chamber. [Illustration: _No. 84. Seal of W. Moraunt._]