It occurred, however, to a good Irishman and antiquary, a Protestant from Belfast, that there might be a nobler use for the Castle of Ardglass. He bought the castle. He replaced the vanished floors and ceilings with beams and boards of Irish timber. A few broken pieces of masonry were repaired. The inside walls were left in their rough state, merely dashed with white. At the door was laid the anvil of an Irish smith to be held between the knees, a stone with the centre cut out and fitted with iron. The great fire-places were filled with logs from a local plantation. Over the flaming fires huge pots steamed, hanging from iron crooks. Old Ulster ironwork for kitchen use hung round the hearth. A dresser, such as Captain Bodley might have seen, was stocked with pewter plates and old crockery, brought, like the ironwork, by willing givers who possessed any relic of Ireland of former days. Tables of Irish oak, and Irish carved benches of the old fashion, and Irish cupboards and settles furnished the rooms. They were lighted by Irish-made candles in the iron taper-holders of over a hundred years ago, by a very remarkable bronze chandelier of the eighteenth century, and by a still more striking floreated cross and circle of lights, made in the penal days by some local metal-worker with the ancient Irish tradition of ornament still with him. In the chief room a few old prints and portraits hung on the walls, amid new banners representing O’Neill, O’Donnell, and the black Raven of the Danes; most prominent of all, Shane O’Neill himself, standing proud in his full height in regal saffron kilt and flowing mantle, a fine design by a young Irish artist of Belfast. A tiny round-apsed oratory opened off this chief room. It was hung with golden Irish linen; between the lights on the altar stood a small crucifix of the penal times, and interlaced Irish patterns hung on the walls. The columbary in one of the towers, perhaps unique in early castles, with its seventy-five triangular recesses or resting-places for the pigeons built in the walls, and entries to north and south--one a square opening with sill inside and alighting slab outside, the other a space cut below the narrow window exactly the size through which a bird might pass--was again stocked with pigeons given by a local admirer, and the tower named after St. Columba. From a pole flew the flag of O’Neill, the Red Right Hand, in memory of old days. In three months the deserted ruin was transformed into a dwellinghouse, where Mr. Bigger and his helpers could sleep and cook and live. The workmen in a fury of enthusiasm worked as if a master’s eye was on them at every minute. [Illustration: CASTLE SÉAN, ARDGLASS.]