A MODERN USE FOR A MEDIÆVAL INSTITUTION. 'The world is not a bad world, after all,' said Allan, as he and Holcroft, after a casual glance at the long lines of portraits panelled in the wainscotting of the gallery, together with many a Cuyp, Zucchero, Canaletti, and so forth, now looked out from one of the lofty windows upon the fair domain of his family, that spread for miles around Dundargue. 'It is easy enough for you to talk thus of the world,' thought Holcroft, 'but if, like me, you had only debts and difficulties for your patrimony you might take a different view.' 'I was born here in Dundargue, and all the happy memories of my childhood centre round it,' said Allan. 'Every man, woman, and child in the place are known to me; every rock and hill, glen and woodland, familiar, with all their stories and traditions; and wherever I might be with the Black Watch, in England on the staff, far away in central India, or in the gorges of Afghanistan, my memory always fled home to dear old Dundargue and all its surroundings.' 'How pathetic!' sneered Holcroft, silently, and puzzled to understand the mood of Allan, who, in the consciousness of his own happiness with Olive, felt at that moment rather inclined to take a soft and generous view of the world at large. 'It certainly is a fine old ancestral house--one to be proud of,' said Holcroft, aloud, 'with a special history, and all that sort of thing. I have heard a devil of a deal about its oubliette--where is it?' 'Let me show you--come this way,' said Allan, lighting a fresh cigar. Smoking together, Allan, and Holcroft following, wandered up and down circular stone stairs in narrow turrets, where the steps had been worn and hollowed by the feet of long departed generations; through dusky corridors where, in some places, moth-eaten arras hung upon its rusty tenter-hooks, and where, as Holcroft said, there was 'a loud smell of mice;' through secret doors and past 'the priest's hole,' in which James of Jerusalem abode, till they reached a narrow stone passage near the summit of the great tower, closed by a massive little door. Allan threw this open, and the black, round mouth of the oubliette, about four feet in diameter, yawned before them. The great, horizontal stone slab or flagstone, which in ancient times had closed the mouth of this horrible accessory to feudal tyranny, had long since given place to a massive trap-door of oak, which was held up by a wooden prop, under which the cold, dark vault showed its mysterious profundity. 'By Jove! it is a strange affair; more like a draw-well than anything else.' 'But supposed to be twelve feet diameter at the bottom--a fine old relic of the days when "warriors bold wore spurs of gold," and the rack and the red-hot ploughshare were aids to the orthodox opinions of society in religion and politics.' And Allan laughed as he spoke.