gave light. On the right, extending the same distance as the hall
itself, was a great room known as the Red Drawing-room, into which Dan
first showed the Marquis. This room had not been used since father's
death four or five years before, and for a long time previous to that
only on the rare occasions when a county gathering of some sort was held
at the inn. It had been furnished in good taste and style in colonial
days, but was now dilapidated and musty. The heavy red damask curtains
were drawn before the windows, and the room was dark and cheerless. Dan
admitted the dazzling light of the sun; but the Marquis only shivered and
seemed anxious to pass quickly on.

"You see, sir," observed the young landlord, "it is dismal enough."

"_Mais oui_--_mais oui_," exclaimed the Marquis.

At the foot of the stairway the corridor turned at right angles and ran
north. On either side opened a number of chambers in like conditions of
disrepair, which had been used as bedrooms in the palmy days of the
hostelry. This corridor ended at the bowling-alley, where as children Tom
and Dan had loved to play. Half-way to the entrance to the bowling-alley
a third hallway branched off to the right, leading to a similar set of
chambers. Into all these they entered, the Marquis examining each with
quick glances, dismissing them with the briefest interest and the most
obvious comment.

Dan saved the _piece-de-resistance_ till last. This was a little room
entered from the second corridor just at the turn--the only room indeed,
as he truthfully said, that merited a visit.

"This," he explained, "we call the Oak Parlour. It is the only room on