[Illustration: _Steps to State Apartments._] Leaving the chapel, the visitor will cross the court-yard to the BANQUETING-HALL; but he will notice on his way a flight of stone steps leading from the court-yard, near the doorway of the ante-chapel, up to the state apartments, so that the family could attend the chapel without passing through the hall, and could also, with their guests, be admitted at other times to their suite of rooms. In this first court-yard he will also do well to take especial notice of the beautiful and intricate designs on the lead-work of the heads of the spouts—many of which are filled with delicate Gothic tracery—and the gargoyles, or water-spouts, some of which are grotesquely carved in figures of curious character, and some of them of uncouth shape. One or two of these we have engraved on another page. Entering the open doorway of the advanced porch, which, with a wide passage adjoining, forms the way through to the inner, or second court-yard, the visitor will notice, standing on the stone bench on his left hand, a fine Roman altar which, many years ago, was dug up in the grounds. It bears the inscription,— [Illustration: _Roman Altar, Haddon Hall._] DEO MARTI BRACIACÆ OSITTIVS CAECILIANS PRAEFECT COH I AQVITANO V S which may be rendered, “To the God Mars, Braciaca, Osittius, Caecilianus, Prefect of the first Cohort of the Aquitani, in performance of a vow”—the term _Braciacæ_: as applied to Mars being singular. To the left of the passage four arched doorways conduct respectively to the buttery, the great kitchen, and other domestic offices, and to a staircase leading to the long suite of chambers on the north side, and also communicating, by means of a gallery in the Banqueting-Hall, with all the other apartments of the building. To the right is a massive and time-worn oak screen, with two open doorways, which divides the Banqueting-Hall from the passage. Entering by the first of these openings in the screen, the visitor will not fail to notice a suspicious-looking little iron bracket with ring attached, high above his head. This, tradition says, was an instrument of punishment for enforcing the observance of laws of conviviality. For it is said, if, in the days of feasting and merriment in the “good old times,” a man should fail to drink up his quota of liquor, he was fastened up by the wrist to this ring, and the liquor poured down his sleeve so as gradually to trickle down him on to the floor; or, if guilty of any other breach of the law or decorum of the board, he was similarly tied up, and compelled so to remain during the carousal, and was treated now and then not only with a stream of cold water poured down his sleeve, but by other indignities forced upon him. [Illustration: _The Banqueting-Hall: with the Minstrels’ Gallery._]