grey massive old keep than a regularly-built
hall. Indeed, I suppose that the house only
consisted of the great tower in the centre in
the days when the Scots made their raids
terrible as far south as this; and that after
the Stuarts came in, and there was a little
more security of property in those parts, the
Starkeys of that time added the lower building,
which runs, two stories high, all round
the base of the keep. There has been a grand
garden laid out in my days on the southern
slope near the house; but when I first knew
the place, the kitchen-garden at the farm was
the only piece of cultivated ground belonging
to it. The deer used to come within
sight of the drawing-room windows, and
might have browsed quite close up to the
house, if they had not been too wild and shy.
Starkey Manor House itself stood on a
projection or peninsula of high land, jutting out
from the abrupt hills that form the sides of
the Trough of Bolland. These hills were
rocky and bleak enough towards their summit;
lower down they were clothed with tangled
copse-wood and green depths of fern, out of
which a grey giant of an ancient forest tree
would tower here and there, throwing up its
ghastly white branches, as if in imprecation,
to the sky. These trees, they told me, were
the remnants of that forest which existed in
the days of the heptarchy, and were even
then noted as landmarks. No wonder that
their upper and more exposed branches were
leafless, and that the dead bark had peeled
away, from sapless old age.

Not far from the house there were a few
cottages, apparently of the same date as the
keep, probably built for some retainers of the
family, who sought shelter—they and their
families and their small flocks and herds—at
the hands of their feudal lord. Some of them
had pretty much fallen to decay. They were
built in a strange fashion. Strong beams
had been sunk firm in the ground at the
requisite distance, and their other ends had
been fastened together, two and two, so as to
form the shape of one of those rounded
waggon-headed gipsy tents, only very much
larger. The spaces between were filled with
mud, stones, osiers, rubbish, mortar—
anything to keep out the weather. The fires
were made in the centre of these rude
dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the only
chimney. No Highland hut, no Irish cabin
could be of rougher construction.

The owner of this property at the beginning
of the present century was a Mr.
Patrick Byrne Starkey. His family had
kept to the old faith, and were staunch
Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to
marry any one of Protestant descent,
however willing he or she might have been to
embrace the Romish religion. Mr. Patrick
Starkey's father had been a follower of
James the Second; and, during the
disastrous Irish campaign of that monarch, he
had fallen in love with an Irish beauty, a

Miss Byrne, as zealous for her religion and
for the Stuarts as himself. He had returned
to Ireland after his escape to France, and
married her, bearing her back to the court at
St. Germains. But some licence on the part
of the disorderly gentlemen who surrounded
King James in his exile, had insulted his
beautiful wife and disgusted him; so he
removed from St. Germains to Antwerp, in
Belgium, whence, in a few years' time, he
quietly returned to Starkey Manor House,
some of his Lancashire neighbours having lent
their good offices to reconcile him to the
powers that were. He was as firm a Roman
Catholic as ever, and as staunch an advocate
for the Stuarts and the divine rights of
kings; but his religion almost amounted to
asceticism, and the conduct of those with
whom, he had been brought in such close
contact at St. Germains would little bear the
inspection of a stern moralist. So he gave
his allegiance where he could not give his
esteem, and learned to respect sincerely the
upright and moral character of one whom
he yet regarded as an usurper. King
William's government had little need to fear
such an one. So he returned, as I have said,
with a sobered heart and impoverished
fortunes, to his ancestral house, which had
fallen sadly to ruin while the owner had
been a courtier, a soldier, and an exile. The
roads into the Trough of Bolland were little
more than cart-ruts. Indeed, the way up
to the house lay along a ploughed field
before you came to the deer-park. Madam,
as the country-folk used to call Mrs.
Starkey, rode on a pillion behind her
husband, holding on to him. with a light
hand by his leather riding-belt. Little
Master (he that was afterwards Squire
Patrick Byrne Starkey) was held on to his
pony by a serving-man. A woman past
middle age walked with a firm and strong
step by the cart that held much of the
baggage; and, high up on the mails and boxes,
sat a girl of dazzling beauty, perched
lightly on the topmost trunk, and swaying
herself fearlessly to and fro, as the cart
rocked and shook in the heavy roads of
late autumn. The girl wore the Antwerp
faille, or black Spanish mantle over her
head, and altogether her appearance was
such that the old cottager who described the
procession to me many years after, said that
all the country-folk took her for a foreigner.
Some dogs, and the boy who held them in
charge, made up the company. They rode
silently along, looking with grave, serious
eyes at the people, who came out of the
scattered cottages to bow or curtsey to the real
squire " come back at last," and gazed after
them with gaping wonder, not deadened by
the sound of the foreign language in which
the few necessary words that passed among
them were spoken. One lad, called from his
staring by the Squire to come and help about
the cart, accompanied them to the Manor