

Transcribed from the 1896 “Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales” Macmillan and
Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org.  Proofed by Audrey
Emmitt and Eugenia Corbo.





                              THE POOR CLARE


CHAPTER I.


DECEMBER 12th, 1747.—My life has been strangely bound up with
extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any
connection with the principal actors in them, or indeed, before I even
knew of their existence.  I suppose, most old men are, like me, more
given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond interest
and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the events—though these
may have far more interest for the multitude—immediately passing before
their eyes.  If this should be the case with the generality of old
people, how much more so with me!... If I am to enter upon that
strange story connected with poor Lucy, I must begin a long way back.  I
myself only came to the knowledge of her family history after I knew her;
but, to make the tale clear to any one else, I must arrange events in the
order in which they occurred—not that in which I became acquainted with
them.

There is a great old hall in the north-east of Lancashire, in a part they
called the Trough of Bolland, adjoining that other district named Craven.
Starkey Manor-house is rather like a number of rooms clustered round a
gray, massive, old keep than a regularly-built hall.  Indeed, I suppose
that the house only consisted of a 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 <DW72>
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 copsewood and
green depths of fern, out of which a gray giant of an ancient forest-tree
would tower here and there, throwing up its ghastly white branches, as if
in imprecation