It had six tall windows, each barred with iron and latticed with brass; the roof was arched with stone; but the walls were hung with pale brown leather, richly stamped with thistles and silver fleurs-de-lys. The oak furniture was enormously massive and strong; all the chairs were quaintly and grimly carved, and had arms with great knobs and square cushioned seats of blue Utrecht velvet. The fire-irons were chained to the jambs of the fire-place; for our forefathers, honest souls! being somewhat short-tempered, were wont to have disputes when they sat round the fire at night. In the recesses of the carved stone ambres and quaint old knobby cabinets, were many articles of vertu and rarity, which the taste of umquhile Sir Andrew Barton, when homeward bound, had made him select for his good dame in happier days. There were Turkish carpets, African skins, and Persian bows; Venetian crystals, Japanese canisters (brought by the way of the Red Sea), Muscovite bowls, and Italian bronzes; a plump Cupid sprawling on a dolphin's back; a St. John asleep; the model of a ship, and several Egyptian gods and goddesses, minus "pantaloons and bodices," on which the noble lords looked somewhat dubiously, "as smelling of sorcery and damnable idolatry;" but the late Sir Andrew was a pious and upright man--one who would rather have died than withheld a plack of the cess due to kirk or king; and in his mercantile days he never omitted to pay regularly to the Hospitallers of St. Anthony at Leith the kain to which they were entitled by law--a Scottish quart from every tun of wine that passed the Beacon Rock; and of all the fighting merchant-mariners of the time, none had paid more liberally the _primo gilt_, as it is still named,--a duty paid from time immemorial, to aid "the poor, old, and infirm mariners of Leith." The southern windows of the hall, showed the ancient bridge of the burgh, the old gothic Hospital and Church of St. Nicholas, with its burying-ground, (on which, in after years, the citadel was built,) and the Links of North Leith, a green and level plain, which has now entirely disappeared, and become an irreclaimable waste, flooded at every tide. The eastern windows showed the opposite bank of the river, with the quaint shipping, the Beacon Rock, the wooden pier, the steeple of St. Anthony, and the picturesque outline of the old Timber Holfe, or bourse, where the Memel and Riga wood was sold, and where traders generally met for the transaction of business.