After administering this preliminary dose of instruction, old Mazey opened the first of the doors on the left-hand side of the passage.  It led into the dining-room, with which Magdalen was already familiar.  The second room was fitted up as a library; and the third, as a morning-room.  The fourth and fifth doors—­both belonging to dismantled and uninhabited rooms, and both locked-brought them to the end of the north wing of the house, and to the opening of a second and shorter passage, placed at a right angle to the first.  Here old Mazey, who had divided his time pretty equally during the investigation of the rooms, in talking of “his honor the Admiral,” and whistling to the dogs, returned with all possible expedition to the points of the compass, and gravely directed Magdalen to repeat the ceremony of putting her back against the wall.  She attempted to shorten the proceedings, by declaring (quite correctly) that in her present position she knew she was looking east.  “Don’t you talk about the east, my dear,” said old Mazey, proceeding unmoved with his own system of instruction, “till you know the east first.  Put your back ag’in this wall, and look straight afore you.  What do you see?” The remainder of the catechism proceeded as before.  When the end was reached, Magdalen’s instructor was satisfied.  He chuckled and winked at her once more.  “Now you may talk about the east, my dear,” said the veteran, “for now you know it.”

The east passage, after leading them on for a few yards only, terminated in a vestibule, with a high door in it which faced them as they advanced.  The door admitted them to a large and lofty drawing-room, decorated, like all the other apartments, with valuable old-fashioned furniture.  Leading the way across this room, Magdalen’s conductor pushed back a heavy sliding-door, opposite the door of entrance.  “Put your apron over your head,” said old Mazey.  “We are coming to the Banqueting-Hall now.  The floor’s mortal cold, and the damp sticks to the place like cockroaches to a collier.  His honor the admiral calls it the Arctic Passage.  I’ve got my name for it, too—­I call it, Freeze-your-Bones.”

Magdalen passed through the doorway, and found herself in the ancient Banqueting-Hall of St. Crux.

On her left hand she saw a row of lofty windows, set deep in embrasures, and extending over a frontage of more than a hundred fee t in length.  On her right hand, ranged in one long row from end to end of the opposite wall, hung a dismal collection of black, begrimed old pictures, rotting from their frames, and representing battle-scenes by sea and land.  Below the pictures, midway down the length of the wall, yawned a huge cavern of a fireplace, surmounted by a towering mantel-piece of black marble.  The one object of furniture (if furniture it might be called) visible far or near in the vast emptiness of the place, was a gaunt ancient tripod of curiously chased metal, standing lonely in the middle of the hall, and supporting