“But how did he prosper?” said the stranger.
“Didn't he marry the daughter of the rich Englishman, that lived there beyant? and wasn't he a member of Parlimint? and sure they tell me that he went out beyond the says to be be Judge somewhere in foreign parts—in India, I believe.”
“And who lives in the old castle of the family?”
“The crows and the owls lives in it now,” said the woman, with a grating laugh—“the same way as the weasels and the rats burrow in my own little place here. Ay, you may stare and wonder, but here, where you see me sit, among these old stones and black timbers, was my own comfortable home—the house I was born and reared in—and the hearth I sat by when I was a child.”
The man whispered a few words to his companion in a deep, low voice—she started, and was about to speak, when he stopped her, saying, “Nay, nay, it is better not;” then, turning to the woman, asked, “And were there, then, no others, whose fortunes you remember?”
“It is little worth while remembering them,” said the crone, whose own misfortunes shed bitterness over all the memory of others. “There was an old Scotchman that lived there long after the others were gone, and when the niece went back to the nunnery in France he staid there still alone by himself. The people used to see him settling the room, and putting books here, and papers there, and making all ready agin she came back—and that's the way he spent his time to the day of his death. Don't cry, my lady; he was a hard-hearted old man, and it isn't eyes like yours should weep tears for him; if you want to pity any one, 'pity the poor, that's houseless and friendless.'”
“And the Lodge,” said the stranger—“is not that the name they gave the pretty house beside the lake?”
“'Tisn't a pretty house now, then,” said the hag, laughing. “It's a ruin like the rest.”
“How is that?—does the Englishman never come to it?”
“Why should he come to it? Sure it's in law ever since that black-hearted villain Hemsworth was killed—nobody knows who owns it, and they say it will never be found out; but,” said she, rising, and gathering her cloak around her as she prepared to move away—“there's neither luck nor grace upon the spot. God Almighty made it beautiful and lovely to look upon, but man and man's wickedness brought a curse down upon it.”