About a mile from the spot we have just named stood the ancient mansion of Grizlehurst.  Surrounded on every side by dark and almost trackless woods, sprung through a long line of ancestry from primeval forests, it reposed in undisturbed seclusion, still and majestic as the proud swan that basked upon the dark lake before it, secure from intrusion and alarm.  Gable-ends and long casements broke the low piebald front into a variety of detail—­a-combination of effect throwing an air of picturesque beauty on the whole, which not all the flimsy and frittered “Gothic” can convey to the mansions of modern antiques.  For the timber employed in its erection a forest must have been laid prostrate.  Huge arched fire-places; chimney-pieces carved with armorial bearings; oak tables absolutely joisted to sustain their vast bulk; bedsteads that would not have groaned with the weight of a Titan;—­the whole intended to oppose a ponderous resistance to the ravages of time and fashion.  Not a vestige is left.  Those laughing halls echo no more with the loud and boisterous revel; the music of the “many twinkling” feet is gone; scarcely a stone is left upon its fellow; a few straggling trees alone mark the site.  The beech and willow are waving o’er its hearth!  Who would build for the destroyer?  And yet man, with the end of these vanities in prospect, daily, hourly still builds on; his schemes and his projects extending through the long vista of succeeding ages, as though his dwelling were eternal, and his own fabric should survive the ruin and the doom of all!

A long train of ancestors bearing the name of Holt occupied this dwelling as the family mansion.  The manor of Spotland, forfeited by the rebellion of Paslew, Abbot of Whalley, was granted by Henry the Eighth to Thomas Holt, afterwards knighted in Scotland by Edward, Earl of Hertford, in the thirty-sixth year of the reign of that monarch.  The present possessor of the same name, grandson to Sir Thomas, resided at Grislehurst during the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign and that of James.  He married Constance, the daughter of Sir Edward Littleton of Pillaton Hall, Stafford.  One son, Francis, and a daughter named Constance, were the fruit of this union.  At the commencement of our narrative he had been for some years a widower, and his son was then absent on foreign travel.

It was in the memorable year 1603, the last of Elizabeth.  The rebellion in Ireland had been smothered, if not extinguished; and the great O’Neale, Earl of Tyrone and King of Ulster, together with many other chiefs, were forced to remain concealed in woods and morasses.  Outlawed and outcast, some of them crossed over into England, remaining there until pardoned by the Queen.

Constance was now in her nineteenth year.  Bright as her own morn of life, she had seen but few clouds in that season of hope and delight.  Sorrow was to her scarce known, save in the nursery tales and wild ballads of the surrounding district.  When the glowing morn was overcast, she was unprepared, unfitted for the change.  The storm came, and the little sum of her happiness, launched on this frail and perishing bark, was wrecked without a struggle!