Knights on foot, then, my fancy at once substituted; and as the child, now commencing her duties as show-woman, pointed out the servants' offices, it was no difficult matter to picture the baron's retainers lazily grouped around the stone walls of the low cells, for such the apartments were, polishing their master's armor, or bousing over jugs of ale, while handsome pages loitered about the court-yard, waiting the summons of their lord, or the sound of their lady's silver whistle. Fancy was an indispensable attendant in making the circuit of the apartments, which surrounded at least three sides of this outer quadrangle. Without her aid, they were simply remarkable for their similarity, their vacancy, their unfitness for any modern purpose save that of sheep-pens or lumber-rooms. Destitute of windows, so that the sun and air found admittance only through the doorway, without fireplaces, boarded floors, or plastered walls, they presented simply so many square feet of space walled in by stone and mortar. But Fancy had the power to enliven, furnish, people them. She suggested that their very number was an indication of sociability, excitement, noise, and mirth. Here, as in all feudal dwellings, the vast disproportion between the space allotted to the dependents and that reserved for the lord of the manor pointed to the time when each castle was a walled city, each baronial hall the home of a crowd of petty retainers. In that long-ago, what multitudes of voices had stirred the silence of the court-yard! The bare walls of the apartments then were hung with breast-plate, spear, and cross-bow,--trophies of war and the chase furnished decorations suited to the taste of the occupants, and the hides of slaughtered beasts carpeted the cold floor. Stirring tales of love and warfare gathered little knots of listeners; wandering minstrels sought hospitality, and repaid it in songs and rhymes; the beef and the bowl went round; my lord's jester made his privileged way into every circle in turn, and cracked his jokes at everybody's expense; and pretty Bess, my lady's maid, peeped in at the open door, just in time to join in the laugh against her lover. But Fancy only whispered, and another little attendant, whose name was Fact, spoke out, and interrupted her. "Would you like to see the family-plate?" asked our guide, with the air of one who felt she had really nothing worth showing, but was bound to fulfil her task; and, entering one of the stone-walled apartments, she pointed out a few enormous pewter platters, much dimmed by time and neglect, leaning against the wall. What visions of Christmas feasts and wassails these relics might have awakened in me, had I been left to gaze on them undisturbed, it is impossible to say; but my mind was not permitted to follow its own bent. "There's nicer ones down at the house, all brightened up," said the child, with simplicity, and looking disdain at the heirlooms she was displaying.