18 THE BOY CRUSADERS.

And thus conversing, the brothers-in-arms re-
turned to the castle, and entered the great hall,
which was so spacious and so high in the roof that
a man on horseback might have turned a spear in it
with all the ease imaginable. It was, indeed, a
stately apartment; the ceiling consisting of a smooth
vault of ashlar-work, the stones being curiously
joined and fitted together; and the walls and roof
decorated by some of those great painters who flou-
rished in England under the patronage of King
Henry and his fair and accomplished queen, Eleanor
of Provence. Here was represented the battle of
Hastings; there the siege of Jerusalem by the
Crusaders under Godfrey of Bouillon and Rotert
Curthose; here the battle of the Standard ; there the
signing of the Great Charter by King John, under
the oak of Runnymede. Around the hall might be
traced the armorial bearings of the lord of the castle
and the chief families with whom the lord of the
castle was allied by blood — the three water-budgets
of De Roos; the three Katherine-wheels of Espec;
the engrailed cross of De Vesci ; the seven blackbirds
of Merley; the lion argent of Dunbar in its field of
gules; and the ruddy lion of Scotland, ramping in
gold; while on the roof was depicted the castle itself,
with gates, and battlements, and pinnacles, and
towers; and there also, very conspicuous, was the
form of a rose, and around it was inscribed in
Gothic letters the legend—

He who doth secrets reveal,

Beneath my roof shall never live.

it was ten o’clock—in that age the hour of dinner