This cascade was forty feet below the
edge of the cliff upon which the mansion stood.
It was not a very large house, for most of the older part of it had
fallen into ruin long ago, and the ruined towers and shattered walls had
been cleared away; but it was a noble mansion notwithstanding.
One octagonal tower, with a battlemented roof, still stood almost as
firmly as it had stood in the days of the early Plantagenets, when rebel
soldiers had tried the strength of their battering-rams against the grim
stone walls. The house was built entirely of stone; the Gothic porch was
ponderous as the porch of a church. Within all was splendour; but
splendour that was very different from the modern elegance that was to
be seen in the rooms of Maudesley Abbey.
At Jocelyn's Rock the stamp of age was upon every decoration, on every
ornament. Square-topped helmets that had been hacked by the scimitars of
Saracen kings, spiked chamfronts that had been worn by the fiery barbs
of haughty English crusaders, fluted armour from Milan, hung against the
blackened wainscoting in the shadowy hall; Scottish hackbuts, primitive
arquebuses that had done service on Bosworth field, Homeric bucklers and
brazen greaves, javelins, crossbows, steel-pointed lances, and
two-handed swords, were in symmetrical design upon the dark and polished
panels; while here and there hung the antlers of a giant red-deer, or
the skin of a fox, in testimony to the triumphs of long-departed
sportsmen of the house of Jocelyn.
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