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"Upstairs, besides the bedrooms, was a little chapel with some remains of Gothic carving, and a few interesting pictures of the fifteenth century; a cunningly contrived priest-hole, and a long gallery lined with dusty books, whither my lord used to repair on rainy days. Many of the windows were darkened by creepers, and over one was a flap of half-detached plaster work which hung like a shroud.
To such vandals we can only emphasise the remarks we have already made about the market value of a "priest-hole" nowadays. A little to the right of the Kidderminster road, and about two miles from the pretty village of Chaddesley Corbet, with its old timber houses and inn, stands the ghostly old hall of Harvington.
No "House of Seven Gables" across the Atlantic can have quite such memories as these, yet, oddly enough, I do not know of more than one ghost of a Jesuit in all England. He appeared to a learned doctor in a library, and the learned doctor described the phantom, not long ago, in the Athenaeum. "Does the priest of your 'priest-hole' walk?"
The pallet bed against the wall was covered with rotten rags, dry as tinder. There were traces of food, who could say how ancient, in a dish by the bed. There was a little crucifix, with a broken neck-chain, lying close to the platter. Some priest who had used this priest-hole years before had left it there in his hurry; I wondered how.
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