The door admitted them to a large and lofty drawing-room,
decorated, like all the other apartments, with valuable old-fashioned
furniture. Leading the way across this room, Magdalen's conductor pushed
back a heavy sliding-door, opposite the door of entrance. "Put
your apron over your head," said old Mazey. "We are coming to the
Banqueting-Hall now. The floor's mortal cold, and the damp sticks to the
place like cockroaches to a collier. His honor the admiral calls it
the Arctic Passage. I've got my name for it, too--I call it,
Freeze-your-Bones."
Magdalen passed through the doorway, and found herself in the ancient
Banqueting-Hall of St. Crux.
On her left hand she saw a row of lofty windows, set deep in embrasures,
and extending over a frontage of more than a hundred fee t in length. On
her right hand, ranged in one long row from end to end of the opposite
wall, hung a dismal collection of black, begrimed old pictures, rotting
from their frames, and representing battle-scenes by sea and land. Below
the pictures, midway down the length of the wall, yawned a huge cavern
of a fireplace, surmounted by a towering mantel-piece of black marble.
The one object of furniture (if furniture it might be called) visible
far or near in the vast emptiness of the place, was a gaunt ancient
tripod of curiously chased metal, standing lonely in the middle of the
hall, and supporting a wide circular pan, filled deep with ashes from
an extinct charcoal fire.
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