One bleak March evening, I came in sight of the places described at
the beginning of my story. I could hardly understand the rude
dialect in which the direction to old Bridget's house was given.

"Yo' see yon furleets," all run together, gave me no idea that I was
to guide myself by the distant lights that shone in the windows of
the Hall, occupied for the time by a farmer who held the post of
steward, while the Squire, now four or five and twenty, was making
the grand tour. However, at last, I reached Bridget's cottage--a
low, moss-grown place: the palings that had once surrounded it were
broken and gone; and the underwood of the forest came up to the
walls, and must have darkened the windows. It was about seven
o'clock--not late to my London notions--but, after knocking for some
time at the door and receiving no reply, I was driven to conjecture
that the occupant of the house was gone to bed. So I betook myself
to the nearest church I had seen, three miles back on the road I had
come, sure that close to that I should find an inn of some kind; and
early the next morning I set off back to Coldholme, by a field-path
which my host assured me I should find a shorter cut than the road I
had taken the night before. It was a cold, sharp morning; my feet
left prints in the sprinkling of hoar-frost that covered the ground;
nevertheless, I saw an old woman, whom I instinctively suspected to
be the object of my search, in a sheltered covert on one side of my
path. I lingered and watched her. She must have been considerably
above the middle size in her prime, for when she raised herself from
the stooping position in which I first saw her, there was something
fine and commanding in the erectness of her figure. She drooped
again in a minute or two, and seemed looking for something on the
ground, as, with bent head, she turned off from the spot where I