"ElizabethGaskell-ThePoorClare" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskell Elizabeth C)

their upper and more exposed branches were leafless, and that the
dead bark had peeled away, from sapless old age.

Not far from the house there were a few cottages, apparently, of the
same date as the keep; probably built for some retainers of the
family, who sought shelter--they and their families and their small
flocks and herds--at the hands of their feudal lord. Some of them
had pretty much fallen to decay. They were built in a strange
fashion. Strong beams had been sunk firm in the ground at the
requisite distance, and their other ends had been fastened together,
two and two, so as to form the shape of one of those rounded waggon-
headed gipsy-tents, only very much larger. The spaces between were
filled with mud, stones, osiers, rubbish, mortar--anything to keep
out the weather. The fires were made in the centre of these rude
dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the only chimney. No Highland
hut or Irish cabin could be of rougher construction.

The owner of this property, at the beginning of the present century,
was a Mr. Patrick Byrne Starkey. His family had kept to the old
faith, and were stanch Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to
marry any one of Protestant descent, however willing he or she might
have been to embrace the Romish religion. Mr. Patrick Starkey's
father had been a follower of James the Second; and, during the
disastrous Irish campaign of that monarch he had fallen in love with
an Irish beauty, a Miss Byrne, as zealous for her religion and for
the Stuarts as himself. He had returned to Ireland after his escape
to France, and married her, bearing her back to the court at St.
Germains. But some licence on the part of the disorderly gentlemen
who surrounded King James in his exile, had insulted his beautiful
wife, and disgusted him; so he removed from St. Germains to Antwerp,
whence, in a few years' time, he quietly returned to Starkey Manor-
house--some of his Lancashire neighbours having lent their good
offices to reconcile him to the powers that were. He was as firm a
Catholic as ever, and as stanch an advocate for the Stuarts and the
divine rights of kings; but his religion almost amounted to
asceticism, and the conduct of these with whom he had been brought in
such close contact at St. Germains would little bear the inspection
of a stern moralist. So he gave his allegiance where he could not
give his esteem, and learned to respect sincerely the upright and
moral character of one whom he yet regarded as an usurper. King
William's government had little need to fear such a one. So he
returned, as I have said, with a sobered heart and impoverished
fortunes, to his ancestral house, which had fallen sadly to ruin
while the owner had been a courtier, a soldier, and an exile. The
roads into the Trough of Bolland were little more than cart-ruts;
indeed, the way up to the house lay along a ploughed field before you
came to the deer-park. Madam, as the country-folk used to call Mrs.
Starkey, rode on a pillion behind her husband, holding on to him with
a light hand by his leather riding-belt. Little master (he that was
afterwards Squire Patrick Byrne Starkey) was held on to his pony by a