and eighteen I was far from well, and my
good uncle was disturbed by my ill looks.

One day he rang the bell twice into the
clerk's room at the dingy office in Grays
Inn Lane. It was the summons for me, and
I went into his private room just as a gentleman
—whom I knew well enough by sight as
an Irish lawyer of more reputation than
he deserved—was leaving.

My uncle was slowly rubbing his hands
together and considering. I was there two or
three minutes before he spoke. Then he told
me that I must pack up my portmanteau that
very afternoon, and start that night by post-
horse for West Chester. I should get there,
if all went well, at the end of five days' time,
and must then wait for a packet to cross over
to Dublin; from thence I must proceed to a
certain town named Kildoon, and in that
neighbourhood I was to remain, making
certain inquiries as to the existence of any
descendant of the younger branch of a family
to whom some valuable estates had descended
in the female line. The Irish lawyer whom
I had seen was weary of the case, and would
willingly have given up the property without
further ado to a man who appeared to claim
them; but on laying his tables and trees
before my uncle, the latter had foreseen so
many possible prior claimants, that the lawyer
had begged him to undertake the management
of the whole business. In his youth,
my uncle would have liked nothing better
than going over to Ireland himself, and
ferreting out every scrap of paper or parchment,
and every word of tradition respecting
the family. As it was, old and gouty, he
deputed me.

Accordingly, I went to Kildoon. I suspect
I had something of my uncle's delight in
following up a genealogical scent, for I very
soon found out, when on the spot, that Mr.
Rooney the Irish lawyer would have got both
himself and the first claimant into a terrible
scrape, if he had pronounced his opinion that
the estates ought to be given up to him.
There were three poor Irish fellows, each
nearer of kin to the last possessor; but a
generation before there was a still nearer
relation, who had never been accounted for,
nor his existence ever discovered by the
lawyers, I venture to think, till I routed him
out from the memory of some of the old
dependants of the family. What had become
of him? I travelled backwards and forwards;
I crossed over to France, and came back again
with a slight clue, which ended in my
discovering that, wild and dissipated himself,
he had left one child, a son, of yet worse
character than his father; that this same
Hugh Fitzgerald had married a very beautiful
serving-woman of the Byrnes—a person
below him in hereditary rank, but above him
in character; that he had died soon after his
marriage, leaving one child, whether a boy or
a girl I could not learn, and that the mother
had returned to live in the family of the
Byrnes. Now the chief of this latter family
was serving in the Duke of Berwick's
regiment, and it was long before I could hear
from him; it was more than a year before
I got a short, haughty letter—I fancy he
had a soldier's contempt for a civilian, an
Irishman's hatred for an Englishman, an
exiled Jacobite's jealousy of one who
prospered and lived tranquilly under the
government he looked upon as an usurpation.
"Bridget Fitzgerald," he said, "had been
faithful to the fortunes of his sister—had
followed her abroad, and to England when
Mrs. Starkey had thought fit to return. Both
his sister and her husband were dead; he
knew nothing of Bridget Fitzgerald at the
present time: probably Sir Philip Tempest,
his nephew's guardian, might be able to give
me some information." I have not given the
little contemptuous terms; the way in which
faithful service was meant to imply more
than it said—all that has nothing to do with
my story. Sir Philip, when applied to, told
me that he paid an annuity regularly to an
old woman named Fitzgerald, living at Coldholme
(the village near Starkey Manor House).
Whether she had any descendants he could
not say.

One bleak March evening, I came in sight
of the places described in the beginning of
my story. I could hardly understand the
rude dialect in which the direction to old
Bridget's house was given.

"Yo' see yon furleets" all run together,
gave me no idea that I was to guide myself
by the distant lights that shone in the
windows of the hall, occupied for the time by a
farmer who held the post of steward, while
the Squire, now four or five and twenty, was
making the grand tour. However, at last, I
reached Bridget's cottage—a low, moss-grown
place; the palings that had once surrounded
it were broken and gone; and the under-
wood of the forest came up to the walls, and
must have darkened the windows. It was
about seven o'clock—not late to my London
notions—but, after knocking for some time
at the door and receiving no reply, I was
driven to conjecture that the occupant of the
house was gone to bed. So I betook myself
to the nearest church I had seen, three miles
back on the road I had come, sure that close
to that I should find an inn of some kind;
and early the next morning I set off back to
Coldholme, by a field-path which my host
assured me I should find a shorter cut than
the road I had taken the night before. It
was a cold sharp morning; my feet left prints
in the sprinkling of hoar-frost that covered
the ground; nevertheless, I saw an old
woman, whom I instinctively suspected to be
the object of my search, in a sheltered covert
on one side of my path. I lingered and
watched her. She must have been considerably
above the middle size in her prime, for
when she raised herself from the stooping
position in which I first saw her, there was