Vol.1 f.003 recto

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