Carrock Fell, Wigton, Allonby, Carlisle, Maryport, Hesket Newmarket, were all visited in turn, and the adventures of the twain in these spots duly set forth in the pages of the book. In due course they came to Lancaster, and, the inn at that town being the most important of the tour, we deal with it first. The travellers were meditating flight at the station on account of Thomas Idle being suddenly filled with "the dreadful sensation of having something to do." However, they decided to stay because they had heard there was a good inn at Lancaster, established in a fine old house; an inn where they give you bride-cake every day after dinner. "Let us eat bride-cake," they said, "without the trouble of being married, or of knowing anybody in that ridiculous dilemma." And so they departed from the station and were duly delivered at the fine old house at Lancaster on the same night. This was the King's Arms in the Market Street, the exterior of which was dismal, quite uninviting, and lacked any sort of picturesqueness such as one associates with old inns; but the interior soon compensated for the unattractiveness of the exterior by its atmosphere, fittings and customs. Being then over two centuries old, it had allurement calculated to make the lover of things old happy and contented. "The house was a genuine old house," the story tells us, "of a very quaint description, teeming with old carvings, and beams, and panels, and having an excellent staircase, with a gallery or upper staircase cut off from it by a curious fence-work of old oak, or of old Honduras mahogany wood. It was, and is, and will be, for many a long year to come, a remarkably picturesque house; and a certain grave mystery lurking in the depth of the old mahogany panels, as if they were so many deep pools of dark water--such, indeed, as they had been much among when they were trees--gave it a very mysterious character after nightfall." A terrible ghost story was attached to the house concerning a bride who was poisoned there, and the room in which the process of slow death took place was pointed out to visitors. The perpetrator of the crime, the story relates, was duly hanged, and in memory of the weird incident bride-cake was served each day after dinner. The complete story of this melodramatic legend is narrated to Goodchild by a spectre in the haunted chamber where he and his companion had been writing. Dickens wove into the story much fancy and not a little eerieness, and it is said that the publicity given to it in _Household Words_, in which it first appeared, created so much interest that the hotel was sought out by eager visitors who love a haunted chamber. As this was situated in an ancient inn with its antique bedstead all complete, to say nothing of the curious custom of providing bride-cake at dinner in memory of the unfortunate bride, the King's Arms, Lancaster, discovered its fame becoming world-wide instead of remaining local.