In the centre of the ground-floor was a large hall of a cruciform shape, each of the limbs being about fifteen feet wide. The two shorter arms of the cross stretched from side to side of the building in its width; the two longer from end to end of its length. The southern termination of the shorter arms was the great hall-door; the northern arm, which formed the passage between the various ranges of offices, extended to a door at the back, opening into a court-yard surrounded by coach-houses, stables, cow-sheds, pig-sties, and hen-roosts. But the offices, and the passage between them, were shut off from the main hall and the rest of the mansion by double doors; and the square of fifteen feet in the centre of the hall was, to the exent of about two-thirds of the whole, occupied by a large, low-stepped, broad-ballustraded oaken staircase. The eastern and western limbs of the cross afforded the means of communicating with various rooms,--such as library, dining-room, drawing-room, music-room, magistrate's-room, gentleman's-room, and billiard-room, with one or two others to which no name had been applied. Many of these rooms had doors which led into the one adjacent; but this was not invariably the case, for from the main corridor branched off several little passages, separating in some instances one chamber from the other, and leading out upon the terrace by the smaller doors which we have noticed above. What was the use of these passages and doors nobody was ever able to divine, and it remains a mystery to the present day, which I shall not attempt to solve by venturing any hypothesis upon so recondite a subject. The second floor above was laid out much in the same way as the one below, except that one of the limbs of the cross was wanting, the space over the great door being appropriated to a very tolerable bed-room. From this floor to the other, descended two or three staircases, the principal one being the great open flight of steps which I have already mentioned; and the second, or next in importance, being a stone staircase, which reached the ground between the double doors, that shut out the main hall from the offices.