Near Whiteladies is the rival establishment Blackladies, a picturesque red-brick house with step-gables and mullioned bays. As the name implies, this also was a nunnery, but there are but scanty remains of the original building. There is a stone cross, and some other fragments are built into the masonry; and in the stables may be seen the chapel, where services were held until sixty years ago. Part of the moat also remains. A lane near at hand is still known as "Spirit Lane," because the Black Nuns of centuries ago have been seen to walk there. FOOTNOTES: [28] See _Flight of the King_. IN NORTHERN DERBYSHIRE Our first impression of romantic Derbyshire vividly recalled one of the opening chapters of _Adam Bede_. Having secured lodgings at a pretty village not many miles from Haddon, we were somewhat disturbed with nocturnal hammerings issuing from an adjacent wheelwright's. Somebody had had the misfortune to fall into the river and was drowned, so we learned in the morning, and the rest we could guess. Somewhat depressed, we were on the point of sallying forth when the local policeman arrived and demanded our presence at the inquest, as one of the jurymen had failed to put in an appearance. A cheerful beginning to a holiday! [Illustration: GREAT HALL, HADDON.] [Illustration: GREAT HALL, HADDON.] There is something about dear old Haddon Hall that makes it quite unique, and few ancient baronial dwellings are so rich in the poetry of association. In the first place, though a show house, one is not admitted by one door and ejected from another with a jumbled idea of what we have seen and an undigested store of historical information. One forgets it is a show place at all. It is more like the enchanted castle of the fairy story, where the occupants have been asleep for centuries; and in passing through the grand old rooms one would scarcely be surprised to encounter people in mediaeval costume, or knights in clanking armour. The lovers of historical romance for once will find pictures of their imagination realised. They can fit in favourite scenes and characters with no fear of stumbling across modern "improvements" to destroy the illusion and bring them back to the twentieth century. Compare the time-worn grey old walls of this baronial house with those of Windsor Castle, and one will see the havoc that has been done to the latter by centuries of restoration. Events that have happened at Haddon appear to us real; but at Windsor, so full of historic memories, there is but little to assist the imagination. [Illustration: COURTYARD, HADDON.]