then,
again, wood was plentiful in the Trough of Bolland, and great log-fires
danced and glittered in all the dark, old rooms, and gave a look of
home and comfort to everything.

Why do I tell you all this? I have little to do with the Squire and
Madam Starkey; and yet I dwell upon them, as if I were unwilling to
come to the real people with whom my life was so strangely mixed up.
Madam had been nursed in Ireland by the very woman who lifted her in
her arms, and welcomed her to her husband's home in Lancashire.
Excepting for the short period of her own married life, Bridget
Fitzgerald had never left her nursling. Her marriage--to one above her
in rank--had been unhappy. Her husband had died, and left her in even
greater poverty than that in which she was when he had first met with
her. She had one child, the beautiful daughter who came riding on the
waggon-load of furniture that was brought to the Manor-House. Madam
Starkey had taken her again into her service when she became a widow.
She and her daughter had followed 'the mistress' in all her fortunes;
they had lived at St. Germains and at Antwerp, and were now come to her
home in Lancashire. As soon as Bridget had arrived there, the Squire
gave her a cottage of her own, and took more pains in furnishing it for
her than he did in anything else out of his own house. It was only
nominally her residence. She was constantly up at the great house;
indeed, it was but a short cut across the woods from her own home to
the home of her nursling. Her daughter Mary, in like manner, moved from
one house to the other at her own will. Madam loved both mother and
child dearly. They had great influence over her, and, through her, over
her husband. Whatever Bridget or Mary willed was sure to come to pass.
They were not disliked; for, though wild and passionate, they were also
generous by nature. But the other servants were afraid of them, as
being in secret the ruling spirits of the household. The Squire had
lost his interest in all secular things; Madam was gentle,
affectionate, and yielding. Both husband and wife were tenderly
attached to each other and to their boy; but they grew more and more to
shun the trouble of decision on any point; and hence it was that
Bridget could exert such despotic power. But if every one else yielded
to her 'magic of a superior mind,' her daughter not unfrequently
rebelled. She and her mother were too much alike to agree. There were
wild quarrels betwee