crumbling walls tell the tale of the long centuries it has bravely weathered. Near to this ancient fane, in a wide space where three roads meet, stands a market cross apparently reconstructed from old material, presumably that of the fine Perpendicular Cross that is recorded to have stood somewhere here in past days.
SECRET CHAMBERS Our antiquarian friend at Stamford had told us that shortly after leaving "the Deepings" we should pass close to the roadside an ideal old manor-house with a gateway-house in front, and having mullioned windows, courtyard, great hall, oak screen, with quaint and characteristic architectural details, that made it a most interesting place. "You must see it," he exclaimed after enlarging rapturously upon its rare beauties: a skeleton, he further informed us, had recently been found in the roof there, supposed to be that of a man stowed away and starved in a hiding-hole—without which advantage no old home of any pretensions was considered complete. Strange to say, even only the other day an architect of standing confided to me that more than once recently he had been called upon to provide a secret chamber in large houses he was employed to design: the real reason for this curious demand it would be interesting to know. I have seen quite a modern country house with a well-planned secret hiding-place, and the amount of ingenuity displayed in the contriving of this excited my utmost admiration. But why such things in the close of the nineteenth century?
The charming word-pictures of this old home,
