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gossip--that a thousand local legends concerning the venerable mansion, sanctified by their antiquity in the ears of the family, afforded a fertile source of jesting to Jonas Sparks. The Hall abounded in concealed staircases and iron hiding-places, connected with a variety of marvellous traditions of the civil wars; besides a walled-up suite of chambers, haunted, as becomes a walled-up suite of chambers; and justice-rooms and tapestried-rooms, to which the long abandonment of the house, and the heated imaginations of the few menials left in charge of its desolate vastness, attributed romances likely enough to have provoked the laughter of a matter-of-fact man like the owner of Lexley Park. But neither Sir Laurence nor his old servants were likely to forgive this insult offered to the family legends of a house which had little else left to boast of. Even the neighbouring families were displeased to hear them derided; and my grandfather never liked to hear a joke on the subject of the coach-and-four which was said to have driven into the court-yard of the Hall on the eve of the execution of the rebel lords in 1745, having four headless inmates, who were duly welcomed as guests by old Sir Robert Altham. Nay, as a child, I had so often thrilled on my nurse's knees during the relation of this spectral visitation, that I own I felt indignant if any one presumed to laugh at a tale which had made me quake for fear. Among those who were known to resent the familiar tone in which Mr Sparks had been heard to criticise the pomps and vanities exhibited at Lexley Hall by the Althams of the olden time, was a certain General Stanley, who, inhabiting a fine seat of his own at about ten miles' distance, was fond of bringing over his visitors to visit the old Hall, as an interesting specimen of county antiquity. _He_ knew the peculiarities of the place, and could repeat the traditions connected with the hiding-places better than the housekeeper herself; and I have heard her say it was a pleasure to hear him relating these historical anecdotes with all the fire of an old soldier, and see his venerable grey hair blown about as he stood with his party on the battlements, pointing out to the ladies the fine range of territory formerly belonging to the Althams. The old lady protested that the general was nearly as much grieved as herself to behold the old mansion so shorn of its beams; and certain it is, that once when, on visiting the hall
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