The Poor Clare | Page 7

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"I must have no talk of ducking her, Dickon. Why, she must be the very
woman poor Starkey bade me have a care of; but when I came here last
she was gone, no one knew where. I'll go and see her to-morrow. But
mind you, sirrah, if any harm comes to her, or any more talk of her
being a witch--I've a pack of hounds at home, who can follow the scent
of a lying knave as well as ever they followed a dog-fox; so take care
how you talk about ducking a faithful old servant of your dead
master's."
"Had she ever a daughter?" asked Mr. Gisborne, after a while.
"I don't know--yes! I've a notion she had; a kind of waiting woman to
Madam Starkey."
"Please your worship," said humbled Dickon, "Mistress Bridget had a
daughter--one Mistress Mary--who went abroad, and has never been
heard on since; and folk do say that has crazed her mother."
Mr. Gisborne shaded his eyes with his hand.
"I could wish she had not cursed me," he muttered. "She may have
power--no one else could." After a while, he said aloud, no one

understanding rightly what he meant, "Tush! it is impossible!"--and
called for claret; and he and the other gentlemen set-to to a
drinking-bout.
CHAPTER II.

I now come to the time in which I myself was mixed up with the people
that I have been writing about. And to make you understand how I
became connected with them, I must give you some little account of
myself. My father was the younger son of a Devonshire gentleman of
moderate property; my eldest uncle succeeded to the estate of his
forefathers, my second became an eminent attorney in London, and my
father took orders. Like most poor clergymen, he had a large family;
and I have no doubt was glad enough when my London uncle, who was
a bachelor, offered to take charge of me, and bring me up to be his
successor in business.
In this way I came to live in London, in my uncle's house, not far from
Gray's Inn, and to be treated and esteemed as his son, and to labour
with him in his office. I was very fond of the old gentleman. He was
the confidential agent of many country squires, and had attained to his
present position as much by knowledge of human nature as by
knowledge of law; though he was learned enough in the latter. He used
to say his business was law, his pleasure heraldry. From his intimate
acquaintance with family history, and all the tragic courses of life
therein involved, to hear him talk, at leisure times, about any coat of
arms that came across his path was as good as a play or a romance.
Many cases of disputed property, dependent on a love of genealogy,
were brought to him, as to a great authority on such points. If the
lawyer who came to consult him was young, he would take no fee, only
give him a long lecture on the importance of attending to heraldry; if
the lawyer was of mature age and good standing, he would mulct him
pretty well, and abuse him to me afterwards as negligent of one great
branch of the profession. His house was in a stately new street called
Ormond Street, and in it he had a handsome library; but all the books
treated of things that were past; none of them planned or looked

forward into the future. I worked away--partly for the sake of my
family at home, partly because my uncle had really taught me to enjoy
the kind of practice in which he himself took such delight. I suspect I
worked too hard; at any rate, in seventeen hundred 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 Grey's 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