So beds remained throughout the Middle Ages and to last century. Some ancient beds had gabled roofs over them, and many remained fixed in on all sides save one. But at the same time there was the truckle-bed for the servant; even the iron bedstead without tester, precisely like those turned out by every ironmonger. Viollet le Duc gives an engraving of one such in his “Dictionnaire du Mobilier Français,” from a miniature of the tenth century. He gives also a representation of an iron bed thrust under a roof-like covering, with curtains, and ventilating windows, on which Solomon is shown asleep, from a MS. of the twelfth century. It would almost seem that in the Middle Ages a contest raged between the four-poster and the bed without tester, and in the MS. from which the illustration just mentioned is taken the wisdom of Solomon is represented as combining both fashions. Anyone who has taken lodgings in Germany is aware of the alcove-bed; the curtains are let fall that conceal a recess, and, lo! the chamber has ceased to be a bedroom and has become a reception-room. This is another adaptation of the Northern conception of a bed. In the London houses of Gower Street, and of streets built at the same period, the same idea is carried out in a somewhat pretentious form. In front, looking out on the street, is the sitting-room, opposite the window are folding doors, and behind them the bedroom. The little back room behind these doors is the _lokhvila_ somewhat enlarged. [Illustration: _Fig. 25._--HUT, TREWORTHA MARSH, WITH STONE BED. (_By kind permission of “The Daily Graphic.”_)] Indeed, the two ideas of bed, the open and the closed, go back a long way. I have mentioned in the preceding article the exploration of an ancient settlement--date early but unfixed--on the Cornish moors. One hut had in it both types of bed. We saw in the article on “Ovens” how that in the Hebrides, in the bee-hive huts to this day, a portion of the floor is marked off by curb stones, and this portion is converted into a bed at night and a seat by day. So was it in one of the stone huts on Trewortha Marsh. A set of granite blocks in a curve parted one portion of the earth floor from the rest. That was the bed according to the Keltic ideal. But, and this was curious, in the depth of the wall at the farther end of the hut, was a hole seven feet deep in the thickness of the wall, with a great slab of granite at the bottom smoothed to serve as mattress. It was about 2 feet 3 inches wide at the foot, as much at the head, but widened to 3 feet 4 inches in the middle. The height above the floor was 4 inches. It adjoined the oven--it was a bed according to Scandinavian ideas, with this sole difference, that access to it was obtained at the foot, which alone was open, and not at the side. [Illustration: _Fig. 26._--A RUINED HUT, TREWORTHA.