Tudor
style, while here and there a buttress or arch was decidedly Norman in
its tendency.

To a connoisseur this medley of architecture was a great eye-sore, but
to the world in general the very irregularity of the gray old pile
added to its picturesque entirety, and somehow the effect was very
pleasing.

The various owners of the Hall, holding all modern innovations in
abhorrence, had preserved its antiquity as far as possible by
restoring the old carvings and frescoes that were its chief ornaments.
The entrance-hall was of noble dimensions, with a painted ceiling, and
a great fire-place surrounded by oaken carvings of fruit and flowers,
the work of Gibbon, with the Redmond motto, "Fideles ad urnam," in the
center.

The walls were adorned with stags' antlers, and other trophies of the
chase, while implements of warfare, from the bow and arrow to the
modern revolver, were arranged in geometrical circles round the
battered suits of armor.

The dwelling-rooms of the house, with the exception of the
drawing-room and billiard-room, were long and low, with the same
painted ceilings and heavy oak carvings; and some of the windows,
especially in the library and morning-room, were furnished with such
deep embrasures, as to form small withdrawing rooms in themselves, and
leave the further end of the apartment in twilight obscurity even on
the brightest summer's day.

Many people were of opinion that the old Hall needed complete
renovation, but Sir Wilfred had cared little for such things. In his
father's time a few of the rooms had been modernized and refurnished,
the damask drawing-room for example, a handsome billiard-room added,
and two or three bedrooms fitted up according to nineteenth century
taste.

But Sir Wilfred had preferred the old rooms in the quaint embrasures,
where many a fair Redmond dame had worked with her daughters at the
tapestry that hung in the green bedroom, which represented the death
of Saul and the history of Gideon.

In these rooms was furniture belonging to many a different age.
Carpets and chair-cushions worked in tent stitch and cross stitch and
old-fashioned harpsichord; gaudy white and gold furniture of the Louis
Quatorze time, mixed with the spindle-legged tables of the Queen Anne
epoch.

At the back of the Hall lay a broad stone terrace reaching from one
end of the house to the other.

On one side were the stables and kennels, and on the other a walled
sunny garden, with fruit