The heavy door was standing half open, while the floor beneath was strewn with a quantity of shallow wooden trays lined with green baize.

"It's high time, in me own belafe, for her husband to come ashkin' and inquirin' her close all in a hape on the floor upstairs, with her bath-dress gone from the nails, and the front door swingin',me never findin' of it out till it cooms tay-time, with all the children cryin' on me, and me head shplit with the noise, and" Dr. Sharpe strode in a bewildered way to the front door.

Thus, after all, the low-jointed, low-floored, small-windowed, ill-ventilated cottages now occupied by the agricultural laborers of England were proportionately as good as the houses built at the same period for the farmers of the country, many of which are occupied by farmers now, and the like of which never could be erected again on this island.

We get a glimpse, in passing, of the interior view with its white, pebbly floor, in which the basket starfish have possessiona fitting reception room for sea nymph or mermaid.

In the same strain we are told of a convent whose "walls sweat, and its floors quiver," when a contumacious brother treads them;and when the parents of the same personage are torn from his room by the Director of the convent, we are informed that "the rushing of their robes as he dragged them out, seemed like the whirlwind that attends the presence of the destroying angel."

But he was a hardy customer, for he bounced up like a rubber ball, only to be floored even more viciously before he was well set on his feet.

So four years long his life went to and fro Betwixt the scarlet gown and rough blue coat; The garret study and the wide-floored barn; The wintry city, and the sunny fields.

Hammer strokes rang from half-cleared hillsides, where some regiment, newly encamped, was busily flooring its tents; the blows of axes sounded from the oak woods; and Ailsa could see great trees bending, slowly slanting, then falling with a rippling crash of smashed branches.