ace. The little
creature in her arms began to utter its piteous cry, as it shivered
with the cold. Bridget stirred; she moved--she listened. Again that
long whine; she thought it was for her daughter; and what she had
denied to her nursling and mistress she granted to the dumb creature
that Mary had cherished. She opened the door, and took the dog from
Madam's arms. Then Madam came in, and kissed and comforted the old
woman, who took but little notice of her or anything. And sending up
Master Patrick to the hall for fire and food, the sweet young lady
never left her nurse all that night. Next day, the Squire himself came
down, carrying a beautiful foreign picture: Our Lady of the Holy Heart,
the Papists call it. It is a picture of the Virgin, her heart pierced
with arrows, each arrow representing one of her great woes. That
picture hung in Bridget's cottage when I first saw her; I have that
picture now.

Years went on. Mary was still abroad. Bridget was still and stern,
instead of active and passionate. The little dog, Mignon, was indeed
her darling. I have heard that she talked to it continually; although,
to most people, she was so silent. The Squire and Madam treated her
with the greatest consideration, and well they might; for to them she
was as devoted and faithful as ever. Mary wrote pretty often, and
seemed satisfied with her life. But at length the letters ceased--I
hardly know whether before or after a great and terrible sorrow came
upon the house of the Starkeys. The Squire sickened of a putrid fever;
and Madam caught it in nursing him, and died. You may be sure, Bridget
let no other woman tend her but herself; and in the very arms that had
received her at her birth, that sweet young woman laid her head down,
and gave up her breath. The Squire recovered, in a fashion. He was
never strong--he had never the heart to smile again. He fasted and
prayed more than ever; and people did say that he tried to cut off the
entail, and leave all the property away to found a monastery abroad, of
which he prayed that some day little Squire Patrick might be the
reverend father. But he could not do this, for the strictness of the
entail and the laws against the Papists. So he could only appoint
gentlemen of his own faith as guardians to his son, with many charges
about the lad's soul, and a few about the land, and the way it was to
be held while he was a minor. Of course, Bridget was not forgotten. He
sent for her as he lay on