You entered into a wide, low hall, the oak ceiling resting on broad square pillars of the same dark wood; all round hung countless memorials of chase and war, for the Livingstones had been hunters and soldiers beyond the memory of man.
Often, passing through of a winter's evening, I have stopped to watch the fitful effects of the great logs burning on the andirons, as their light died away, deadened among brown bear-skins and shadowy antlers, or played, redly reflected, on the mail-shirt and corslet of Crusader or Cavalier.
There were many portraits too; one, the most remarkable, fronted you as you came through the great doorway, the likeness of a very handsome man in the uniform of a Light Dragoon; under this hung a cavalry sword, and a brass helmet shaded with black horse-hair. The portrait and sword were those of Guy's father; the helmet belonged to the Cuirassier who slew him.
It was in a skirmish with part of Kellermann's brigade, near the end of the Peninsular war; Colonel Livingstone was engaged with an adversary in his front, when a trooper, delivering point from behind, ran him through the body. He had got his death-wound, and knew it; but he came of a race that ever died hard and dangerously; he only ground his teeth, and, turning short in his saddle, cut the last assailant down. Look at the helmet, with the clean, even gap in it, cloven down to the cheek-strap--the stout old Laird of Colonsay struck no fairer blow.
It was curious to mark how the same expression of sternness and decision about the lips and lower part of the face, which was so remarkable in their descendants, ran through the long row of ancestral portraits. You saw it--now, beneath the half-raised visor of Sir Malise, surnamed _Poing-de-fer_, who went up the breach at Ascalon shoulder to shoulder with strong King Richard--now, yet more grimly shadowed forth, under the cowl of Prior Bernard, the ambitious ascetic, whom, they say, the great Earl of Warwick trusted as his own right hand--now, softened a little, but still distinctly visible, under the long love-locks of Prince Rupert's aid-de-camp, who died at Naseby manfully in his harness--now, contrasting strangely with the elaborately powdered peruke and delicate lace ruffles of Beau Livingstone, the gallant, with the whitest hand, the softest voice, the neatest knack at a sonnet, and the deadliest rapier at the court of good Queen Anne. Nay, you could trace it in the features of many a fair Edith and Alice, half counteracting the magnetic attraction of their melting eyes.