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 slope 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, to the sky. These trees, they told
me, were the remnants of that forest which existed in the days of the
Heptarchy, and were even then noted as landmarks. No wonder that
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,