projecting far over the lower part; a covered porch with a coat of half-
obliterated arms deep panelled over the oak door. Nothing grand, yet all
how venerable! But what is this? Close beside the old, quiet,
unassuming Manor House rises the skeleton of a superb and costly pile,
--a palace uncompleted, and the work evidently suspended,--perhaps long
since, perhaps now forever. No busy workmen nor animated scaffolding.
The perforated battlements roofed over with visible haste,--here with
slate, there with tile; the Elizabethan mullion casements unglazed; some
roughly boarded across,--some with staring forlorn apertures, that showed
floorless chambers, for winds to whistle through and rats to tenant.
Weeds and long grass were growing over blocks of stone that lay at hand.
A wallflower had forced itself into root on the sill of a giant oriel.
The effect was startling. A fabric which he who conceived it must have
founded for posterity,--so solid its masonry, so thick its walls,--and
thus abruptly left to moulder; a palace constructed for the reception of
crowding guests, the pomp of stately revels, abandoned to owl and bat.
And the homely old house beside it, which that lordly hall was doubtless
designed to replace, looking so safe and tranquil at the baffled
presumption of its spectral neighbour.

The driver had rung the bell, and now turning back to the chaise met
Lionel's inquiring eye, and said, "Yes; Squire Darrell began to build
that--many years ago--when I was a boy. I heerd say it was to be the
show-house of the whole county. Been stopped these ten or a dozen
years."

"Why?--do you know?"

"No one knows. Squire was a laryer, I b'leve: perhaps he put it into
Chancery. My wife's grandfather was put into Chancery jist as he was