It was no wonder that those who dared to listen
outside her door at night believed that she held converse with some
spirit; in short, she was unconsciously earning for herself the dreadful
reputation of a witch. Her little dog, which had wandered half over the Continent with her, was
her only companion; a dumb remembrancer of happier days. Once he was
ill; and she carried him more than three miles, to ask about his
management from one who had been groom to the last Squire, and had then
been noted for his skill in all diseases of animals. Whatever this man
did, the dog recovered; and they who heard her thanks, intermingled with
blessings (that were rather promises of good fortune than prayers),
looked grave at his good luck when, next year, his ewes twinned, and his
meadow-grass was heavy and thick. Now it so happened that, about the year seventeen hundred and eleven, one
of the guardians of the young squire, a certain Sir Philip Tempest,
bethought him of the good shooting there must be on his ward’s property;
and in consequence he brought down four or five gentlemen, of his
friends, to stay for a week or two at the Hall. From all accounts, they
roystered and spent pretty freely. I never heard any of their names but
one, and that was Squire Gisborne’s. He was hardly a middle-aged man
then; he had been much abroad, and there, I believe, he had known Sir
Philip Tempest, and done him some service. He was a daring and dissolute
fellow in those days: careless and fearless, and one who would rather be
in a quarrel than out of it. He had his fits of ill-temper besides, when
he would spare neither man nor beast. Otherwise, those who knew him
well, used to say he had a good heart, when he was neither drunk, nor
angry, nor in any way vexed. He had altered much when I came to know
him. One day, the gentlemen had all been out shooting, and with but little
success, I believe; anyhow, Mr. Gisborne had none, and was in a black
humour accordingly. He was coming home, having his gun loaded,
sportsman-like, when little Mignon crossed his path, just as he turned
out of the wood by Bridget’s cottage. Partly for wantonness, partly to
vent his spleen upon some living creature. Mr. Gisborne took his gun,
and fired—he had better have never fired gun again, than aimed that
unlucky shot, he hit Mignon, and at the creature’s sudden cry, Bridget
came out, and saw at a glance what had been done. She took Mignon up in
her arms, and looked hard at the wound; the poor dog looked at her with
his glazing eyes, and tried to wag his tail and lick her hand, all
covered with blood. Mr. Gisborne spoke in a kind of sullen penitence:

“You should have kept the dog out of my way—a little poaching varmint.”

At this very moment, Mignon stretched out his legs, and stiffened in her
arms—her lost Mary’s dog, who had wandered and sorrowed with her for
years. She walked right into Mr. Gisborne’s path, and fixed his
unwilling, sullen look, with her dark and terrible eye. “Those never throve that did me harm,” said she. “I’m alone in the
world, and helpless; the more do the saints in heaven hear my prayers. Hear me, ye blessed ones! hear me while I ask for sorrow on this bad,
cruel man. He has killed the only creature that loved me—the dumb beast
that I loved. Bring down heavy sorrow on his head for it, O ye saints! He thought that I was helpless, because he saw me lonely and poor; but
are not the armies of heaven for the like of me?”

“Come, come,” said he, half remorseful, but not one whit afraid. “Here’s
a crown to buy thee another dog. Take it, and leave off cursing! I care
none for thy threats.”

“Don’t you?” said she, coming a step closer, and changing her imprecatory
cry for a whisper which made the gamekeeper’s lad, following Mr.
Gisborne, creep all over. “You shall live to see the creature you love
best, and who alone loves you—ay, a human creature, but as innocent and
fond as my poor, dead darling—you shall see this creature, for whom death
would be too happy, become a terror and a loathing to all, for this
blood’s sake. Hear me, O holy saints, who never fail them that have no
other help!”

She threw up her right hand, filled with poor Mignon’s life-drops; they
spirted, one or two of them, on his shooting-dress,—an ominous sight to
the follower. But the master only laughed a little, forced, scornful
laugh, and went on to the Hall. Before he got there, however, he took
out a gold piece, and bade the boy carry it to the old woman on his
return to the village. The lad was “afeared,” as he told me in after
years; he came to the cottage, and hovered about, not daring to enter. He peeped through the window at last; and by the flickering wood-flame,
he saw Bridget kneeling before the picture of Our Lady of the Holy Heart,
with dead Mignon lying between her and the Madonna. She was praying
wildly, as her outstretched arms betokened. The lad shrunk away in
redoubled terror; and contented himself with slipping the gold piece
under the ill-fitting door. The next day it was thrown out upon the
midden; and there it lay, no one daring to touch it. Meanwhile Mr. Gisborne, half curious, half uneasy, thought to lessen his
uncomfortable feelings by asking Sir Philip who Bridget was? He could
only describe her—he did not know her name. Sir Philip was equally at a
loss. But an old servant of the Starkeys, who had resumed his livery at
the Hall on this occasion—a scoundrel whom Bridget had saved from
dismissal more than once during her palmy days—said:—

“It will be the old witch, that his worship means. She needs a ducking,
if ever a woman did, does that Bridget Fitzgerald.”

“Fitzgerald!” said both the gentlemen at once. But Sir Philip was the
first to continue:—

“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.