Barnaby Rudge Manuscript: Chapters 1 to 7

lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge chimnies zig-[??] zag chimnies [chimneys], after travelling through ^{out of} which it seemed as though even smoke itself [must c???? out?] could not choose but come [out?] in ^{more than naturally} [????] fantastic shapes, imparted to it [??] in its tortuous progress; and [???] vast stables [????], gloomy, and ruinous, and empty. [???????. ???? ???]^{The place was} said to have been built in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there was a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept [???] ^there one night while upon [????] a hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled room ^{with a deep bay window}, but that next morning, while standing on a mounting block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the virgin monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky page for some neglect of duty. The matterof-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there were a few among the Maypole customers, ^{as unluckily there always are in every little society published text: community}, were inclined to look upon this tradition as rather apocryphal; but, whenever the landlord of that ancient hostelry appealed to the mounting block itself as evidence, and triumphantly pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all true believers exulted

as in a victory. Whether these, and many [???] other stories of the like nature, were true or untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, [which?] which which will sometimes happen with houses of an uncertain, [??] as with ladies of a certain, age. Its windows were ?? old diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken and uneven, its ceilings blackened by the hand of rime, and heavy with massive beams. Over the doorway was an ancient porch, quaintly and grotesquely carved; and here on summer evenings the more favoured customers smoked and drank -- ay, and sang many a good song too, sometimes -- reposing on two grim-looking high-backed settles, which, like the twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded the entrance to the mansion. In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swallows had built their nests for many a long year, and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered in the eaves. There were more pigeons about the dreary stable-yard and outbuildings than anybody but the landlord could reckon up. The wheeling and circling flights of runts