224 ROME AND PARIS

also (for some unfathomable reason) three billiard balls
in a little box with a glass top. And there were four,
or it may have been five, Landseer engravings in
frames of light-coloured wood.

Yet there were stranger things to come. Having
rested in the waiting-room, the visitor was then
conducted back into the corridor and down a flight
of steep stone steps which led to the level of the
avenue. On reaching the bottom he was startled to
find himself in a large pentagonal forecourt. The
walls of this Propylaea were constructed of black
granite irregularly morticed together with thick cement.
There were a large number of turrets, pinnacles, bar-
bicans, embrasures, machicoulis, ramparts, merlons,
battlements, and arrow-slits. The avenue passed
through this outer ward at right angles to the railway
line. To the right there was a high portcullised gate-
way which led down to the sea. To the left an even
more imposing feudal arch disguised the railway
bridge. Each of these two arches was decorated with
a large coat of arms—dexter, a lion with a tressure
flory counterflory or, sinister a heraldic tiger ermine.
To-day, the avenue, the forecourt, the waiting-
room, and indeed the railway station, are seldom used.
The tressure of the lion has become more counterflory
than ever ; some of the balls have dropped from the
coronets ; and the arrow-slits are hidden in ivy. But
on that August morning of 1889 the whole outer ward
glistened in welcome. The carriages were waiting at
the door of the staircase; the agent and the tenants
formed a mounted escort; Lord Dufferin, accom-
panied by Ronald Munro Ferguson, his impending
son-in-law, drove in happy triumph to his home.