yourself in a narrow, low, arched room, which runs quite across the
house, having a blazoned window again at either extremity, and filled
all over with smaller pieces of armour and weapons, such as swords,
firelocks, spears, arrows, darts, daggers, &c. &c. &c. Here are
the pieces, esteemed most precious by reason of their histories
respectively. I saw, among the rest, Rob Roy's gun, with his initials,
R.M.C. i.e. Robert Macgregor Campbell, round the touch-hole; the
blunderbuss of Hofer, a present to Sir Walter from his friend Sir
Humphrey Davy; a most magnificent sword, as magnificently mounted, the
gift of Charles the First to the great Montrose, and having the arms
of Prince Henry worked on the hilt; the hunting bottle of bonnie
King Jamie; Bonaparte's pistols (found in his carriage at Waterloo,
I believe), _cum multis aliis_. I should have mentioned that
stag-horns and bulls' horns (the petrified relics of the old mountain
monster, I mean), and so forth, are suspended in great abundance above
all the doorways of these armories; and that, in one corner, a dark one
as it ought to be, there is a complete assortment of the old Scottish
instruments of torture, not forgetting the very thumbikins under which
Cardinal Carstairs did _not_ flinch, and the more terrific iron
crown of Wisheart the Martyr, being a sort of barred headpiece, screwed
on the victim at the stake, to prevent him from crying aloud in his
agony.

* * * * *

Beyond the smaller, or rather I should say, the narrower armoury,
lies the dining parlour proper, however; and though there is nothing
Udolphoish here, yet I can well believe that when lighted up and the
curtains drawn at night, the place may give no bad notion of the private
snuggery of some lofty lord abbot of the time of the Canterbury Tales.