communicating with the roof by a slender flight of steps. It
was very high, reaching up two storeys, but extremely narrow,
so much so that directly opposite a stone bench which stood in
a recess for a seat, the wall was hollowed out to admit of the
knees. When this secret chamber was discovered, it contained an
iron chair, a quaint old brass lamp, and some manuscripts of
the Montague family. The Cowdray tradition says that the fifth
Viscount was concealed in this hiding-place for a considerable
period, owing to some dark crime he is supposed to have committed,
though he was generally believed to have fled abroad. Secret
nocturnal interviews took place between Lord Montague and his
wife in "My Lady's Walk," an isolated spot in Cowdray Park. The
Montagues, now extinct, are said to have been very chary with
reference to their Roman Catholic forefathers, and never allowed
the secret chamber to be shown.[1]

[Footnote 1: See _History of a Great English House_.]

A weird story clings to the ruins of Minster Lovel Manor House,
Oxfordshire, the ancient seat of the Lords Lovel. After the battle
of Stoke, Francis, the last Viscount, who had sided with the
cause of Simnel against King Henry VII., fled back to his house
in disguise, but from the night of his return was never seen or
heard of again, and for nearly two centuries his disappearance
remained a mystery. In the meantime the manor house had been
dismantled and the remains tenanted by a farmer; but a strange
discovery was made in the year 1708. A concealed vault was found,
and in it, seated before a table, with a prayer-book lying open
upon it, was the entire skeleton of a man. In the secret chamber
were certain barrels and jars which had contained food sufficient
to last perhaps some weeks; but the mansion having been seized
by the King, soon after the unfortunate Lord Lovel is supposed
to have concealed himself, the probability is that, unable to
regain his liberty, the neglect or treachery of a servant or
tenant brought about this tragic end.

A discovery of this nature was made in 1785 in a hidden vault
at the foot of a stone staircase at Brandon Hall, Suffolk.

Kingerby Hall, Lincolnshire, has a ghostly tradition of an
unfortunate occupant of the hiding-hole near a fireplace being
intentionally fastened in so that he was stifled with the heat and
smoke; the skeleton was found years afterwards in this horrible
death-chamber.

Bayons Manor, in the same county, ha