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Title: Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor

Author: R. D. Blackmore

Release date: January 4, 2006 [eBook #17460]
Most recently updated: July 3, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17460

Credits: Produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LORNA
DOONE: A ROMANCE OF EXMOOR ***

LORNA DOONE,

A Romance of Exmoor

by R. D. Blackmore

ENLARGE TO FULL SIZE

[Click on map to enlarge to full size]

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION

PUBLISHERS' PREFACE

PREFACE BY MISS KATHARINE HILLARD

CHAPTER I -- ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION
CHAPTER II -- AN IMPORTANT ITEM
CHAPTER III -- THE WAR-PATH OF THE DOONES
CHAPTER IV -- A VERY RASH VISIT
CHAPTER V -- AN ILLEGAL SETTLEMENT
CHAPTER VI -- NECESSARY PRACTICE
CHAPTER VII -- HARD IT IS TO CLIMB
CHAPTER VIII -- A BOY AND A GIRL
CHAPTER IX -- THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME
CHAPTER X -- A BRAVE RESCUE AND A ROUGH
RIDE
CHAPTER XI -- TOM DESERVES HIS SUPPER
CHAPTER XII -- A MAN JUSTLY POPULAR
CHAPTER XIII -- MASTER HUCKABACK COMES IN
CHAPTER XIV -- A MOTION WHICH ENDS IN A
MULL
CHAPTER XV -- QUO WARRANTO
CHAPTER XVI -- LORNA GROWING FORMIDABLE

CHAPTER XVII -- JOHN IS BEWITCHED
CHAPTER XVIII -- WITCHERY LEADS TO
WITCHCRAFT
CHAPTER XIX -- ANOTHER DANGEROUS
INTERVIEW
CHAPTER XX -- LORNA BEGINS HER STORY
CHAPTER XXI -- LORNA ENDS HER STORY
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII -- A ROYAL INVITATION
CHAPTER XXIV -- A SAFE PASS FOR KING'S
MESSENGER
CHAPTER XXV -- A GREAT MAN ATTENDS TO
BUSINESS
CHAPTER XXVI -- JOHN IS DRAINED AND CAST
ASIDE
CHAPTER XXVII -- HOME AGAIN AT LAST
CHAPTER XXVIII -- JOHN HAS HOPE OF LORNA
CHAPTER XXIX -- REAPING LEADS TO REVELLING
CHAPTER XXX -- ANNIE GETS THE BEST OF IT
CHAPTER XXXI -- JOHN FRY'S ERRAND
CHAPTER XXXII -- FEEDING OF THE PIGS
CHAPTER XXXIII -- AN EARLY MORNING CALL
CHAPTER XXXIV -- TWO NEGATIVES MAKE AN
AFFIRMATIVE
CHAPTER XXXV -- RUTH IS NOT LIKE LORNA
CHAPTER XXXVI -- JOHN RETURNS TO BUSINESS
CHAPTER XXXVII -- A VERY DESPERATE VENTURE
CHAPTER XXXVIII -- A GOOD TURN FOR JEREMY
CHAPTER XXXIX -- A TROUBLED STATE AND A
FOOLISH JOKE
CHAPTER XL -- TWO FOOLS TOGETHER
CHAPTER XLI -- COLD COMFORT

CHAPTER XLII -- THE GREAT WINTER
CHAPTER XLIII -- NOT TOO SOON
CHAPTER XLIV -- BROUGHT HOME AT LAST
CHAPTER XLV -- A CHANGE LONG NEEDED
CHAPTER XLVI -- SQUIRE FAGGUS MAKES SOME
LUCKY HITS
CHAPTER XLVII -- JEREMY IN DANGER
CHAPTER XLVIII -- EVERY MAN MUST DEFEND
HIMSELF
CHAPTER XLIX -- MAIDEN SENTINELS ARE BEST
CHAPTER L -- A MERRY MEETING A SAD ONE
CHAPTER LI -- A VISIT FROM THE COUNSELLOR
CHAPTER LII -- THE WAY TO MAKE THE CREAM
RISE
CHAPTER LIII -- JEREMY FINDS OUT SOMETHING
CHAPTER LIV -- MUTUAL DISCOMFITURE
CHAPTER LV -- GETTING INTO CHANCERY
CHAPTER LVI -- JOHN BECOMES TOO POPULAR
CHAPTER LVII -- LORNA KNOWS HER NURSE
CHAPTER LVIII -- MASTER HUCKABACK'S SECRET
CHAPTER LIX -- LORNA GONE AWAY
CHAPTER LX -- ANNIE LUCKIER THAN JOHN
CHAPTER LXI -- THEREFORE HE SEEKS
COMFORT
CHAPTER LXII -- THE KING MUST NOT BE
PRAYED FOR
CHAPTER LXIII -- JOHN IS WORSTED BY THE
WOMEN
CHAPTER LXIV -- SLAUGHTER IN THE MARSHES
CHAPTER LXV -- FALLING AMONG LAMBS
CHAPTER LXVI -- SUITABLE DEVOTION
CHAPTER LXVII -- LORNA STILL IS LORNA

CHAPTER -- JOHN IS JOHN NO LONGERLXVIII
CHAPTER LXIX -- NOT TO BE PUT UP WITH
CHAPTER LXX -- COMPELLED TO VOLUNTEER
CHAPTER LXXI -- A LONG ACCOUNT SETTLED
CHAPTER LXXII -- THE COUNSELLOR AND THE
CARVER
CHAPTER LXXIII -- HOW TO GET OUT OF
CHANCERY
CHAPTER LXXIV -- BLOOD UPON THE ALTAR
CHAPTER LXXV -- BLOOD UPON THE ALTAR

List of Illustrations

Cover
Frontispiece
Titlepage
Frontispiece2
Map
Autograph.jpg
xii.jpg Tailpiece
xiv.jpg Cheese-wring
xv.jpg Malmsmead
Map
001a.jpg

001b.jpg Illustrated Capital
Greek1.jpg
Greek2.jpg
002.jpg John Ridd's School Desk
005.jpg The School Room
014.jpg Illustrated Capital
019.jpg Great Coach and Six Horses Labouring
021.jpg Where Be Us Now?
026.jpg Said It Was But a Pixie
028.jpg Illustrated Capital
029.jpg He Rode at the Doone Robber
030.jpg Father Was Found Dead on the Moor
034.jpg Here is a Lady, Counsellor
037.jpg Illustrated Capital
042.jpg Tailpiece
043.jpg Illustrated Capital
045.jpg Won Skill in Target Practice
051.jpg Illustrated Capital
058.jpg A Long Pale Slide of Water
062.jpg Illustrated Capital
063.jpg Sate Upright
069.jpg Tailpiece
070.jpg Illustrated Capital

072.jpg John Ridd at Supper
077.jpg Illustrated Capital
079.jpg A Brave Rescue
081.jpg Tom Faggus
083.jpg Bill Dadds
084.jpg A Rough Ride
085.jpg Tailpiece
086.jpg Illustrated Capital
092.jpg Tailpiece
093.jpg Tom Faggus
100.jpg To Be Upon the Beach
102.jpg Tailpiece
103.jpg Illustrated Capital
105.jpg Uncle Ben in Our Warm Chimney-corner
113.jpg Illustrated Capital
114.jpg Farmer Snow Sat up in the Chair
118.jpg Illustrated Capital
120.jpg Hugh de Whichehalse
127.jpg Tailpiece
128.jpg Illustrated Capital
129.jpg Let Annie Scold Me Well
131.jpg The Meadow Ruffled in The Breeze
132.jpg Willow-bushes over the Stream

136.jpg Tailpiece
137.jpg Illustrated Capital
142.jpg Mother Melldrum
143.jpg Tarr-steps
145.jpg The Devil's Cheese-wring
146.jpg Illustrated Capital
150.jpg “Lie Down!” I Shouted
152.jpg Illustrated Capital
153.jpg Fields Spread With Growth
157.jpg Here Be Some Mistress Lorna
159.jpg Tailpiece
160.jpg Illustrated Capital
162.jpg I Went to Wipe Her Eyes
163.jpg Jewels Lately Belonging to Others
165.jpg Gwenny Carfax
168.jpg Tailpiece
169.jpg Illustrated Capital
172.jpg She Led Me in a Courtly Manner
178.jpg Glen Doone
179.jpg Marwood de Whichehase
182.jpg Spring Was in Our Valley
185.jpg Illustrated Capital
186.jpg Mistress Ridd

190.jpg Read, Read Read!
194.jpg Tailpiece
195.jpg Illustrated Capital
197.jpg Jeremy Kept Me in Jokes
203.jpg Tailpiece
204.jpg Westminster Hall, 1650
212.jpg Tailpiece
213.jpg His Lordship Busy With Letters
221.jpg Exmoor Hills
222.jpg The Luttrell Arms
223.jpg Home at Last
225.jpg Tailpiece
226.jpg Illustrated Capital
236.jpg The Signal
237.jpg A Wealth of Harvest
242.jpg Annie and Lizzie
243.jpg Harvest
245.jpg Tailpiece
246.jpg Illustrated Capital
248.jpg Spare Pipe
253.jpg Maidens Are Such Wondrous Things
256.jpg Illustrated Capital
267.jpg Tailpiece

268.jpg Charles II.
271.jpg Thatching of the Ricks
274.jpg Ha, Ha! Charlie Boy
277.jpg The Pigs
280.jpg Illustrated Capital
281.jpg Autumn's Mellow Hand
283.jpg At Last Then, You Are Come John
286.jpg Illustrated Capital
290.jpg Gotten the Best of Mother
292.jpg Carver Doone
294.jpg Poor Ruth Huckaback Herself
296.jpg She Had Tears in Her Eyes
299.jpg Guy Fawkes
304.jpg Nevertheless, I Went Warily
306.jpg Illustrated Capital
318.jpg Illustrated Capital
328.jpg Illustrated Capital
339.jpg Hand Forth Your Money
341.jpg Tailpiece
342.jpg Illustrated Capital
351.jpg Illustrated Capital
358.jpg Illustrated Capital
361.jpg None Can Tell What the Labour Was

368.jpg Tailpiece
369.jpg Illustrated Capital
370.jpg Open Country
378.jpg Tailpiece
379.jpg Illustrated Capital
383.jpg Set All My Power Against the Door
387.jpg In the Settle Was My Lorna
389.jpg Marwood Whichehalse
397.jpg Illustrated Capital
399.jpg Jump in and Swim
401.jpg He Clad Her over the Loins
407.jpg “Master Faggus,” Began My Mother
409.jpg Tailpiece
410.jpg Illustrated Capital
411.jpg Something Fell on My Head
413.jpg Tom Faggus Took It Eagerly
419.jpg With a Wave of his Hat
421.jpg Tailpiece
422.jpg The Bagworthy Water
432.jpg Illustrated Capital
433.jpg The Moon Was High
437.jpg I Took Him by the Beard
440.jpg Annie Bound the Broken Arm

441.jpg Tailpiece
442.jpg Illustrated Capital
454.jpg Tailpiece
455.jpg Counsellor
464.jpg Illustrated Capital
472.jpg Illustrated Capital
474.jpg Snug Little House Blinked on Me
482.jpg Tailpiece
483.jpg Illustrated Capital
494.jpg Tailpiece
495.jpg Devonshire Town
502.jpg In a Shower of Damask Roses
504.jpg Tailpiece
505.jpg Lorna
517.jpg Tailpiece
518.jpg Illustrated Capital
519.jpg In the Churchyard
524.jpg Kept My Eyes from Her
531.jpg Little Ruth Was at the Bridle
534.jpg Master Huckaback Cast Back his Coat
535.jpg Illustrated Capital
541.jpg Never Had Seen the Like Before
544.jpg Swung Me on High

546.jpg Illustrated Capital
547.jpg Wizard
559.jpg Illustrated Capital
566.jpg Tailpiece
567.jpg Dulverton Church and Street
572.jpg What is Your Advice to Me?
575.jpg Lynmouth
582.jpg Waved a Blue Flag Vehemently
586.jpg Tailpiece
587.jpg Illustrated Capital
595.jpg Tailpiece
596.jpg James I.
604.jpg Illustrated Capital
612.jpg Tailpiece
613.jpg Illustrated Capital
623.jpg Illustrated Capital
631.jpg Old London Bridge
632.jpg Illustrated Capital
639.jpg Two Bad Men
644.jpg Coat of Arms
645.jpg John Ridd Admiring his Coat of Arms
652.jpg Siezed Poor Margery
654.jpg Illustrated Capital

657.jpg Disdainful Smile
660.jpg Volley Sang With a Roar
663.jpg Having Pipes and Schnapps
664.jpg Tailpiece
665.jpg Illustrated Capital
671.jpg Law and Justice
677.jpg Rising Moonlight
679.jpg Tailpiece
680.jpg Illustrated Capital
685.jpg Tailpiece
686.jpg Entrance to Oare Church
693.jpg Tailpiece
694.jpg Illustrated Capital
703.jpg Tailpiece

PREFACE
This work is called a “romance,” because the incidents, characters,
time, and scenery, are alike romantic. And in shaping this old tale, the
Writer neither dares, nor desires, to claim for it the dignity or cumber it with
the difficulty of an historic novel.
And yet he thinks that the outlines are filled in more carefully, and the
situations (however simple) more warmly coloured and quickened, than a
reader would expect to find in what is called a “legend.”
And he knows that any son of Exmoor, chancing on this volume,
cannot fail to bring to mind the nurse-tales of his childhood—the savage
deeds of the outlaw Doones in the depth of Bagworthy Forest, the beauty of
the hapless maid brought up in the midst of them, the plain John Ridd's
Herculean power, and (memory's too congenial food) the exploits of Tom
Faggus.
March, 1869.

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION
Few things have surprised me more, and nothing has more pleased me,
than the great success of this simple tale.
For truly it is a grand success to win the attention and kind regard, not
of the general public only, but also of those who are at home with the
scenery, people, life, and language, wherein a native cannot always satisfy
the natives.
Therefore any son of Devon may imagine, and will not grudge, the
Writer's delight at hearing from a recent visitor to the west that '“Lorna
Doone,' to a Devonshire man, is as good as clotted cream, almost!”
Although not half so good as that, it has entered many a tranquil,
happy, pure, and hospitable home, and the author, while deeply grateful for
this genial reception, ascribes it partly to the fact that his story contains no
word or thought disloyal to its birthright in the fairest county of England.

January, 1873.

PUBLISHERS' PREFACE
In putting this new and somewhat elaborate edition of “Lorna Doone”
upon a market already supplied with various others, some of them excellent
in quality, we ask the literary men and women of the country to give us
their kind support for the reasons set forth herewith.
In the first place, it seems to us that of the countless thousands of
books that have been written in all the various languages, and during the
many ages since first man took to scribbling, no one has ever yet appeared
which is the equal of this in its delicate and beautiful touches of both nature
and human nature. We have had, in various ways, abundant proof that our
feeling in this respect is not individual to ourselves, and we desire to thank
heartily the many friends who have sent us their words and letters of
encouragement, sympathy, and interest during the past year as they have by
chance become aware of our plans.
While there were creditable editions already published, the fact that
none existed just such as we ourselves wished for our own library was our
primary incentive in undertaking this task. The labor upon which we
entered was in short, one of love, and great as has been the expenditure of
time, trouble, and money in the preparation of this book, we have faith to
believe that there are a sufficient number of lovers of the peerless maiden,
Lorna, to greet her appearance in this new dress with an enthusiasm that
will in time repay us.
We earnestly hope that our judgment in the selection of artists, means,
and materials has been, in the main, at least, wise, and that such, will be the
verdict of book-lovers. Also, we hope that our lack of experience as
publishers will disarm the critic, and that he will examine the book
regarding only the excellences which he may find, and passing over its
defects.
One special feature we wish particularly to call to the attention of all,
and that is the beautiful map of the country we have introduced. This may
be regarded by some as an innovation in a romance, but we hope that it will
be found such a manifest convenience as to be its own sufficient excuse.

In this place it seems to be a duty, also, to call attention to the
sympathizing and intelligent interest that has been so freely shown by the
noble band of workers, artists, printers, engravers, etc., who have assisted
us upon this work. To Mr. Henry Sandham, Mr. George Wharton Edwards,
Mr. Harry Fenn, Mr. William Hamilton Gibson, Mr. W. H. Drake, Mr.
Irving R. Wiles, Mr. George E. Graves, Mr. Charles Copeland, Mr. Harper
Pennington, Mrs. Margaret MacDonald Pullman, Miss Harriet Thayer
Durgin, Mr. A. V. S. Anthony, Mr. George T. Andrew, Goupil & Co. of
Paris, Mr. Kurtz, The Wright Gravure Co., Mr. Fillebrown, Mr. William J.
Dana, and our very able printers, Messrs. Fleming, Brewster & Alley-to
them all we therefore extend our cordial acknowledgment of our
indebtedness for their services. The fine map is the work of Messrs.
Matthews, Northrup & Co.
Very respectfully,
The Burrows Brothers Co.

PREFACE BY MISS KATHARINE HILLARD
Author Of “The Doones Of Exmoor,” In “Harper's Magazine,” Vol.
LXV. Page 835.
A novel that has stood the test of time so well as Mr. Blackmore's
charming story of “Lorna Doone” scarcely needs a preface. Certainly no
word of introduction is necessary to testify to its exquisite humor, its
dramatic force, its under-current of poetic feeling, its fine touches of
landscape-painting, and the novelty and interest of its subject. Since it first
appeared in 1869 all these have become as household words, only, perhaps,
all the admirers of “Lorna Doone” have not had the good fortune to wander
through the romantic and picturesque region where the scene of the story is
laid. To travel in North Devon, and over its border into Somerset (“the
Summerland,” as the old Northmen call it), is to be confronted with the
scenes of the novel at every turn; for Mr. Blackmore has so successfully
woven the legends of the whole countryside into his story that one grows to
believe it a veritable history, and is as disappointed to find traces of the
romancer's own hand here and there as to find the hills and valleys laid bare
of the forests which adorned them in the time of the Doones.
It is a singular country, this Devonshire coast, made up as it is of a
series of rocky headlands jutting far out into the sea, and holding between
their stretching arms deep fertile wooded valleys called combes
(pronounced coomes), watered by trout and salmon streams, and filled with
an Italian profusion of vegetation, myrtles and fuchsias, growing in the
open air, and the walls hidden with a luxuriant tapestry of ferns and ivies
and blossoming vines. Even the roofs are covered with flowers; every
cranny bears a blossom or a tuft of green. Then above, long stretches of
barren heath (with a few twisted and wind-tortured trees), where the sheep
pasture and the sky-lark sings, and in and out of the red-fronted cliffs the
querulous sea-gulls flash in the sunshine, and make their plaintive moan.
Near Lynton there is the famous Valley of Rocks, where the wise woman,
Mother Melldrum, had her winter quarters under the Devil's Cheese-wring.

The irregular pile of rocks that goes by this name is wrongly called
Cheese-ring (or scoop) in some editions of “Lorna Doone,” instead of
Cheese-wring or (press), which it somewhat resembles in shape. Southey
began the fortune of Lynton as a watering-place, and wrote a glowing
description of the village and the Valley of Rocks. Of the latter he says: “A
palace of the pre-Adamite kings, a city of the Anakim must have appeared
so shapeless and yet so like the ruins of what had been shaped after the
waters of the flood subsided.” Great bowlders, half hidden by the bracken,
lie about in wildest confusion; the remains of what seem to be Druidic
circles can be traced here and there, and it is hard to persuade one's self that
the ragged towers and picturesque piles of rock are not the work of
Cyclopean architects.
“Our home-folk always call it the 'Danes,' or the 'Denes,' which is no
more, they tell me, than a hollow place, even as the word 'den' is,” says
John Ridd. “It is a pretty place,” he adds, “though nothing to frighten any
body, unless he hath lived in a gallipot.” The valley is well protected from
the wind, and “there is shelter and dry fern-bedding and folk to be seen in
the distance from a bank whereon the sun shines.” Here John Ridd came to
consult the wise woman toward the end of March, while the weather was
still cold and piercing. In the warm days of summer she lived “in a pleasant

cave facing the cool side of the hill, far inland, near Hawkridge, and close
over Tarr-steps—a wonderful crossing of Barle River, made (as every body
knows) by Satan for a wager.” But the antiquarians of to-day assert that the
curious steps were made by the early British.
Not far beyond the Valley of Rocks are the grounds of Ley Abbey, a
modern mansion, but occupying the site of Lev Manor, to whose owner,
Baron de Whichehalse, John Ridd accompanies Master Huckaback in
search of a warrant against the Doones. In fact, all the way from Barnstaple
over the parapet of whose bridge Tom Faggus leaped his wonderful mare,
every nook and corner of the countryside teems with legends of the Doones.
From Lynton we drive over the border into Porlock, in Somerset that quaint
little village where Coleridge wrote his “Kubla Khan,” and where Lord
Lovelace brought Ada Byron to his seat of Ashley Combe.
It was while riding home from Porlock market that John Ridd's father
was murdered by the Doones, and from Porlock we drove in a pony-trap
over the high moors to Malmsmead, in search of the ruined huts of the
Doones.

Over the heights of Yarner Moor, and past Oare Ford (now bridged
over), the road lay past the old church of Oare, where Lorna Doone and

John Ridd were married, and then into the deep flowery lanes that are the
glory of Devon and Somerset. Malmsmead proved to be a little cluster of
heavily thatched cottages, nestled under overhanging trees, where stood an
ancient signboard with “Badgworthy” on one of its arms, pointing the way
we should go. This d on the old sign-board accounted for the local
pronunciation of Badgery, as the river is always called.
At Malmsmead the road ends, and thence one must proceed on foot.
Several deep and flowery lanes lead one at length to the river where a
lonely stone cottage stands on its further brink. This is Clowd Farm, and
here all paths cease. Two hundred years ago, in the time of the Doones, the
narrow valley through which the Bagworthy now dances in the open
sunshine was filled with trees; but now, with the exception of a withered
and stunted old orchard and grove near the farm, there is not a tree to be
seen, and the Bagworthy, a lonely but cheerful trout stream, rattles along in
the broad sunshine through a deep valley, whose sides slope steeply
upward.
After walking about three miles into the heart of the wilderness,
another deep glen, shut in by the same sloping heather-covered hills,
suddenly opens to the right. There are no cliffs, no overhanging trees, not
even a bush, but all along the stream, “with its soft, dark babble,” lie heaps
and half-circles of stone nearly buried in the turf, and almost hidden by the
tall ferns and foxgloves. And this is what we went out for to see! These are
the ruins of the Doones'' huts. There could not be anything more
disappointing. Two hundred years have effectually destroyed all distinctive
traits, and they might have been sheep-folds or pig-sties, or any other
innocent agricultural erection for aught that we could tell. “Not a single
house stood there but was the home of murder,” says their historian. The
suns and rains of two hundred and odd years have effectually washed out
their blood-stains, and there is nothing left there but peace.
Some way beyond the ruins stands a small stone cottage of the most
modern order. We found it to be the abode of a shepherd, away with his
flock on the hills, but his wife, no shepherdess of the Dresden china order,
but a hearty and substantial dame, gave us a cordial welcome. She was in a
state of intense delight at our disappointment about the ruins, and discussed
the situation in that soft Somersetshire accent that gives such breadth and
jollity to the language. “E'll not vind it a beet loike ta buik,” she said, with

her cheery laugh. “Buik's weel mad' up; it houlds 'ee loike, and 'ee can't put
it by, but there's nobbut three pairts o't truth. Hunnerds cooms up here to
se't,” she added, with a chuckle.
The fact is that the traditional and the ideal are as inextricably mixed in
this charming story of “Lorna Doone” as the thousand varieties of seeds in
the fairy tale which the princess was expected to sort out, and it would be
almost as difficult to separate them. Perhaps the best way, after all, is—not
to try.
Katharine Hillard.

CHAPTER I
ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION

If anybody cares to read a simple tale told
simply, I, John Ridd, of the parish of Oare, in the
county of Somerset, yeoman and churchwarden,
have seen and had a share in some doings of this
neighborhood, which I will try to set down in order,
God sparing my life and memory. And they who
light upon this book should bear in mind not only
that I write for the clearing of our parish from ill
fame and calumny, but also a thing which will, I
trow, appear too often in it, to wit—that I am
nothing more than a plain unlettered man, not read
in foreign languages, as a gentleman might be, nor gifted with long words
(even in mine own tongue), save what I may have won from the Bible or
Master William Shakespeare, whom, in the face of common opinion, I do
value highly. In short, I am an ignoramus, but pretty well for a yeoman.
My father being of good substance, at least as we reckon in Exmoor,
and seized in his own right, from many generations, of one, and that the
best and largest, of the three farms into which our parish is divided (or
rather the cultured part thereof), he John Ridd, the elder, churchwarden, and
overseer, being a great admirer of learning, and well able to write his name,
sent me his only son to be schooled at Tiverton, in the county of Devon. For
the chief boast of that ancient town (next to its woollen staple) is a worthy
grammar-school, the largest in the west of England, founded and
handsomely endowed in the year 1604 by Master Peter Blundell, of that
same place, clothier.
Here, by the time I was twelve years old, I had risen into the upper
school, and could make bold with Eutropius and Cæsar—by aid of an
English version—and as much as six lines of Ovid. Some even said that I
might, before manhood, rise almost to the third form, being of a persevering
nature; albeit, by full consent of all (except my mother), thick-headed. But

that would have been, as I now perceive, an ambition beyond a farmer's
son; for there is but one form above it, and that made of masterful scholars,
entitled rightly “monitors”. So it came to pass, by the grace of God, that I
was called away from learning, whilst sitting at the desk of the junior first
in the upper school, and beginning the Greek verb

My eldest grandson makes bold to say that I never could have learned

ten pages further on, being all he himself could manage, with plenty of
stripes to help him. I know that he hath more head than I—though never
will he have such body; and am thankful to have stopped betimes, with a
meek and wholesome head-piece.
But if you doubt of my having been there,
because now I know so little, go and see my name,
“John Ridd,” graven on that very form. Forsooth,
from the time I was strong enough to open a knife
and to spell my name, I began to grave it in the oak,
first of the block whereon I sate, and then of the
desk in front of it, according as I was promoted
from one to other of them: and there my grandson
reads it now, at this present time of writing, and hath
fought a boy for scoffing at it—“John Ridd his
name”—and done again in “winkeys,” a mischievous but cheerful device,
in which we took great pleasure.
This is the manner of a “winkey,” which I here set down, lest child of
mine, or grandchild, dare to make one on my premises; if he does, I shall
know the mark at once, and score it well upon him. The scholar obtains, by
prayer or price, a handful of saltpetre, and then with the knife wherewith he
should rather be trying to mend his pens, what does he do but scoop a hole
where the desk is some three inches thick. This hole should be left with the
middle exalted, and the circumference dug more deeply. Then let him fill it
with saltpetre, all save a little space in the midst, where the boss of the
wood is. Upon that boss (and it will be the better if a splinter of timber rise
upward) he sticks the end of his candle of tallow, or “rat's tail,” as we called
it, kindled and burning smoothly. Anon, as he reads by that light his lesson,

lifting his eyes now and then it may be, the fire of candle lays hold of the
petre with a spluttering noise and a leaping. Then should the pupil seize his
pen, and, regardless of the nib, stir bravely, and he will see a glow as of
burning mountains, and a rich smoke, and sparks going merrily; nor will it
cease, if he stir wisely, and there be a good store of petre, until the wood is
devoured through, like the sinking of a well-shaft. Now well may it go with
the head of a boy intent upon his primer, who betides to sit thereunder! But,
above all things, have good care to exercise this art before the master strides
up to his desk, in the early gray of the morning.
Other customs, no less worthy, abide in the school of Blundell, such as
the singeing of nightcaps; but though they have a pleasant savour, and
refreshing to think of, I may not stop to note them, unless it be that goodly
one at the incoming of a flood. The school-house stands beside a stream,
not very large, called Lowman, which flows into the broad river of Exe,
about a mile below. This Lowman stream, although it be not fond of brawl
and violence (in the manner of our Lynn), yet is wont to flood into a mighty
head of waters when the storms of rain provoke it; and most of all when its
little co-mate, called the Taunton Brook—where I have plucked the very
best cresses that ever man put salt on—comes foaming down like a great
roan horse, and rears at the leap of the hedgerows. Then are the gray stone
walls of Blundell on every side encompassed, the vale is spread over with
looping waters, and it is a hard thing for the day-boys to get home to their
suppers.
And in that time, old Cop, the porter (so called because he hath copper
boots to keep the wet from his stomach, and a nose of copper also, in right
of other waters), his place is to stand at the gate, attending to the flood-
boards grooved into one another, and so to watch the torrents rise, and not
be washed away, if it please God he may help it. But long ere the flood hath
attained this height, and while it is only waxing, certain boys of deputy will
watch at the stoop of the drain-holes, and be apt to look outside the walls
when Cop is taking a cordial. And in the very front of the gate, just without
the archway, where the ground is paved most handsomely, you may see in
copy-letters done a great P.B. of white pebbles. Now, it is the custom and
the law that when the invading waters, either fluxing along the wall from
below the road-bridge, or pouring sharply across the meadows from a cut
called Owen's Ditch—and I myself have seen it come both ways—upon the
very instant when the waxing element lips though it be but a single pebble

of the founder's letters, it is in the license of any boy, soever small and
undoctrined, to rush into the great school-rooms, where a score of masters
sit heavily, and scream at the top of his voice, “P.B.”
Then, with a yell, the boys leap up, or break away from their standing;
they toss their caps to the black-beamed roof, and haply the very books
after them; and the great boys vex no more the small ones, and the small
boys stick up to the great ones. One with another, hard they go, to see the
gain of the waters, and the tribulation of Cop, and are prone to kick the day-
boys out, with words of scanty compliment. Then the masters look at one
another, having no class to look to, and (boys being no more left to watch)
in a manner they put their mouths up. With a spirited bang they close their
books, and make invitation the one to the other for pipes and foreign
cordials, recommending the chance of the time, and the comfort away from
cold water.
But, lo! I am dwelling on little things and the pigeons' eggs of the
infancy, forgetting the bitter and heavy life gone over me since then. If I am
neither a hard man nor a very close one, God knows I have had no lack of
rubbing and pounding to make stone of me. Yet can I not somehow believe
that we ought to hate one another, to live far asunder, and block the mouth
each of his little den; as do the wild beasts of the wood, and the hairy
outrangs now brought over, each with a chain upon him. Let that matter be
as it will. It is beyond me to unfold, and mayhap of my grandson's
grandson. All I know is that wheat is better than when I began to sow it.

CHAPTER II
AN IMPORTANT ITEM

Now the cause of my leaving Tiverton school,
and the way of it, were as follows. On the 29th day
of November, in the year of our Lord 1673, the very
day when I was twelve years old, and had spent all
my substance in sweetmeats, with which I made
treat to the little boys, till the large boys ran in and
took them, we came out of school at five o'clock, as
the rule is upon Tuesdays. According to custom we
drove the day-boys in brave rout down the
causeway from the school-porch even to the gate
where Cop has his dwelling and duty. Little it
recked us and helped them less, that they were our founder's citizens, and
haply his own grand-nephews (for he left no direct descendants), neither did
we much inquire what their lineage was. For it had long been fixed among
us, who were of the house and chambers, that these same day-boys were all
“caddes,” as we had discovered to call it, because they paid no groat for
their schooling, and brought their own commons with them. In consumption
of these we would help them, for our fare in hall fed appetite; and while we
ate their victuals, we allowed them freely to talk to us. Nevertheless, we
could not feel, when all the victuals were gone, but that these boys required
kicking from the premises of Blundell. And some of them were
shopkeepers' sons, young grocers, fellmongers, and poulterers, and these to
their credit seemed to know how righteous it was to kick them. But others
were of high family, as any need be, in Devon—Carews, and Bouchiers,
and Bastards, and some of these would turn sometimes, and strike the boy
that kicked them. But to do them justice, even these knew that they must be
kicked for not paying.
After these “charity-boys” were gone, as in contumely we called them
—“If you break my bag on my head,” said one, “how will feed thence to-
morrow?”—and after old Cop with clang of iron had jammed the double

gates in under the scruff-stone archway, whereupon are Latin verses, done
in brass of small quality, some of us who were not hungry, and cared not for
the supper-bell, having sucked much parliament and dumps at my only
charges—not that I ever bore much wealth, but because I had been thrifting
it for this time of my birth—we were leaning quite at dusk against the iron
bars of the gate some six, or it may be seven of us, small boys all, and not
conspicuous in the closing of the daylight and the fog that came at eventide,
else Cop would have rated us up the green, for he was churly to little boys
when his wife had taken their money. There was plenty of room for all of
us, for the gate will hold nine boys close-packed, unless they be fed rankly,
whereof is little danger; and now we were looking out on the road and
wishing we could get there; hoping, moreover, to see a good string of pack-
horses come by, with troopers to protect them. For the day-boys had
brought us word that some intending their way to the town had lain that
morning at Sampford Peveril, and must be in ere nightfall, because Mr.
Faggus was after them. Now Mr. Faggus was my first cousin and an honour
to the family, being a Northmolton man of great renown on the highway
from Barum town even to London. Therefore of course, I hoped that he
would catch the packmen, and the boys were asking my opinion as of an
oracle, about it.
A certain boy leaning up against me would not allow my elbow room,
and struck me very sadly in the stomach part, though his own was full of
my parliament. And this I felt so unkindly, that I smote him straightway in
the face without tarrying to consider it, or weighing the question duly. Upon
this he put his head down, and presented it so vehemently at the middle of
my waistcoat, that for a minute or more my breath seemed dropped, as it
were, from my pockets, and my life seemed to stop from great want of ease.
Before I came to myself again, it had been settled for us that we should
move to the “Ironing-box,” as the triangle of turf is called where the two
causeways coming from the school-porch and the hall-porch meet, and our
fights are mainly celebrated; only we must wait until the convoy of horses
had passed, and then make a ring by candlelight, and the other boys would
like it. But suddenly there came round the post where the letters of our
founder are, not from the way of Taunton but from the side of Lowman
bridge, a very small string of horses, only two indeed (counting for one the
pony), and a red-faced man on the bigger nag.

“Plaise ye, worshipful masters,” he said, being feared of the gateway,
“carn 'e tull whur our Jan Ridd be?”
“Hyur a be, ees fai, Jan Ridd,” answered a sharp little chap, making
game of John Fry's language.
“Zhow un up, then,” says John Fry poking his whip through the bars at
us; “Zhow un up, and putt un aowt.”
The other little chaps pointed at me, and some began to hallo; but I
knew what I was about.
“Oh, John, John,” I cried, “what's the use of your coming now, and
Peggy over the moors, too, and it so cruel cold for her? The holidays don't
begin till Wednesday fortnight, John. To think of your not knowing that!”
John Fry leaned forward in the saddle, and turned his eyes away from
me; and then there was a noise in his throat like a snail crawling on a
window-pane.
“Oh, us knaws that wull enough, Maister Jan; reckon every Oare-man
knaw that, without go to skoo-ull, like you doth. Your moother have kept arl
the apples up, and old Betty toorned the black puddens, and none dare set
trap for a blagbird. Arl for thee, lad; every bit of it now for thee!”
He checked himself suddenly, and frightened me. I knew that John
Fry's way so well.
“And father, and father—oh, how is father?” I pushed the boys right
and left as I said it. “John, is father up in town! He always used to come for
me, and leave nobody else to do it.”
“Vayther'll be at the crooked post, tother zide o' telling-house.* Her
coodn't lave 'ouze by raison of the Chirstmas bakkon comin' on, and zome
o' the cider welted.”

* The “telling-houses” on the moor are rude cots where the
shepherds meet to “tell” their sheep at the end of the
pasturing season.

He looked at the nag's ears as he said it; and, being up to John Fry's
ways, I knew that it was a lie. And my heart fell like a lump of lead, and I
leaned back on the stay of the gate, and longed no more to fight anybody. A
sort of dull power hung over me, like the cloud of a brooding tempest, and I
feared to be told anything. I did not even care to stroke the nose of my pony

Peggy, although she pushed it in through the rails, where a square of
broader lattice is, and sniffed at me, and began to crop gently after my
fingers. But whatever lives or dies, business must be attended to; and the
principal business of good Christians is, beyond all controversy, to fight
with one another.
“Come up, Jack,” said one of the boys, lifting me under the chin; “he
hit you, and you hit him, you know.”
“Pay your debts before you go,” said a monitor, striding up to me, after
hearing how the honour lay; “Ridd, you must go through with it.”
“Fight, for the sake of the junior first,” cried the little fellow in my ear,
the clever one, the head of our class, who had mocked John Fry, and knew
all about the aorists, and tried to make me know it; but I never went more
than three places up, and then it was an accident, and I came down after
dinner. The boys were urgent round me to fight, though my stomach was
not up for it; and being very slow of wit (which is not chargeable on me), I
looked from one to other of them, seeking any cure for it. Not that I was
afraid of fighting, for now I had been three years at Blundell's, and
foughten, all that time, a fight at least once every week, till the boys began
to know me; only that the load on my heart was not sprightly as of the hay-
field. It is a very sad thing to dwell on; but even now, in my time of
wisdom, I doubt it is a fond thing to imagine, and a motherly to insist upon,
that boys can do without fighting. Unless they be very good boys, and
afraid of one another.
“Nay,” I said, with my back against the wrought-iron stay of the gate,
which was socketed into Cop's house-front: “I will not fight thee now,
Robin Snell, but wait till I come back again.”
“Take coward's blow, Jack Ridd, then,” cried half a dozen little boys,
shoving Bob Snell forward to do it; because they all knew well enough,
having striven with me ere now, and proved me to be their master—they
knew, I say, that without great change, I would never accept that contumely.
But I took little heed of them, looking in dull wonderment at John Fry, and
Smiler, and the blunderbuss, and Peggy. John Fry was scratching his head, I
could see, and getting blue in the face, by the light from Cop's parlour-
window, and going to and fro upon Smiler, as if he were hard set with it.
And all the time he was looking briskly from my eyes to the fist I was

clenching, and methought he tried to wink at me in a covert manner; and
then Peggy whisked her tail.
“Shall I fight, John?” I said at last; “I would an you had not come,
John.”
“Chraist's will be done; I zim thee had better faight, Jan,” he answered,
in a whisper, through the gridiron of the gate; “there be a dale of faighting
avore thee. Best wai to begin gude taime laike. Wull the geatman latt me in,
to zee as thee hast vair plai, lad?”
He looked doubtfully down at the colour of his cowskin boots, and the
mire upon the horses, for the sloughs were exceedingly mucky. Peggy,
indeed, my sorrel pony, being lighter of weight, was not crusted much over
the shoulders; but Smiler (our youngest sledder) had been well in over his
withers, and none would have deemed him a piebald, save of red mire and
black mire. The great blunderbuss, moreover, was choked with a dollop of
slough-cake; and John Fry's sad-coloured Sunday hat was indued with a
plume of marish-weed. All this I saw while he was dismounting, heavily
and wearily, lifting his leg from the saddle-cloth as if with a sore crick in
his back.
By this time the question of fighting was gone quite out of our
discretion; for sundry of the elder boys, grave and reverend signors, who
had taken no small pleasure in teaching our hands to fight, to ward, to parry,
to feign and counter, to lunge in the manner of sword-play, and the weaker
child to drop on one knee when no cunning of fence might baffle the onset
—these great masters of the art, who would far liefer see us little ones
practise it than themselves engage, six or seven of them came running down
the rounded causeway, having heard that there had arisen “a snug little mill”
at the gate. Now whether that word hath origin in a Greek term meaning a
conflict, as the best-read boys asseverated, or whether it is nothing more
than a figure of similitude, from the beating arms of a mill, such as I have
seen in counties where are no waterbrooks, but folk make bread with wind
—it is not for a man devoid of scholarship to determine. Enough that they
who made the ring intituled the scene a “mill,” while we who must be
thumped inside it tried to rejoice in their pleasantry, till it turned upon the
stomach.
Moreover, I felt upon me now a certain responsibility, a dutiful need to
maintain, in the presence of John Fry, the manliness of the Ridd family, and

the honour of Exmoor. Hitherto none had worsted me, although in the three
years of my schooling, I had fought more than threescore battles, and
bedewed with blood every plant of grass towards the middle of the Ironing-
box. And this success I owed at first to no skill of my own; until I came to
know better; for up to twenty or thirty fights, I struck as nature guided me,
no wiser than a father-long-legs in the heat of a lanthorn; but I had
conquered, partly through my native strength, and the Exmoor toughness in
me, and still more that I could not see when I had gotten my bellyful. But
now I was like to have that and more; for my heart was down, to begin
with; and then Robert Snell was a bigger boy than I had ever encountered,
and as thick in the skull and hard in the brain as even I could claim to be.
I had never told my mother a word about these frequent strivings,
because she was soft-hearted; neither had I told by father, because he had
not seen it. Therefore, beholding me still an innocent-looking child, with
fair curls on my forehead, and no store of bad language, John Fry thought
this was the very first fight that ever had befallen me; and so when they let
him at the gate, “with a message to the headmaster,” as one of the monitors
told Cop, and Peggy and Smiler were tied to the railings, till I should be
through my business, John comes up to me with the tears in his eyes, and
says, “Doon't thee goo for to do it, Jan; doon't thee do it, for gude now.” But
I told him that now it was much too late to cry off; so he said, “The Lord be
with thee, Jan, and turn thy thumb-knuckle inwards.”
It was not a very large piece of ground in the angle of the causeways,
but quite big enough to fight upon, especially for Christians, who loved to
be cheek by jowl at it. The great boys stood in a circle around, being gifted
with strong privilege, and the little boys had leave to lie flat and look
through the legs of the great boys. But while we were yet preparing, and the
candles hissed in the fog-cloud, old Phoebe, of more than fourscore years,
whose room was over the hall-porch, came hobbling out, as she always did,
to mar the joy of the conflict. No one ever heeded her, neither did she
expect it; but the evil was that two senior boys must always lose the first
round of the fight, by having to lead her home again.
I marvel how Robin Snell felt. Very likely he thought nothing of it,
always having been a boy of a hectoring and unruly sort. But I felt my heart
go up and down as the boys came round to strip me; and greatly fearing to
be beaten, I blew hot upon my knuckles. Then pulled I off my little cut

jerkin, and laid it down on my head cap, and over that my waistcoat, and a
boy was proud to take care of them. Thomas Hooper was his name, and I
remember how he looked at me. My mother had made that little cut jerkin,
in the quiet winter evenings. And taken pride to loop it up in a fashionable
way, and I was loth to soil it with blood, and good filberds were in the
pocket. Then up to me came Robin Snell (mayor of Exeter thrice since
that), and he stood very square, and looking at me, and I lacked not long to
look at him. Round his waist he had a kerchief busking up his small-clothes,
and on his feet light pumpkin shoes, and all his upper raiment off. And he
danced about in a way that made my head swim on my shoulders, and he
stood some inches over me. But I, being muddled with much doubt about
John Fry and his errand, was only stripped of my jerkin and waistcoat, and
not comfortable to begin.
“Come now, shake hands,” cried a big boy, jumping in joy of the
spectacle, a third-former nearly six feet high; “shake hands, you little
devils. Keep your pluck up, and show good sport, and Lord love the better
man of you.”
Robin took me by the hand, and gazed at me disdainfully, and then
smote me painfully in the face, ere I could get my fence up.
“Whutt be 'bout, lad?” cried John Fry; “hutt un again, Jan, wull 'e?
Well done then, our Jan boy.”
For I had replied to Robin now, with all the weight and cadence of
penthemimeral caesura (a thing, the name of which I know, but could never
make head nor tail of it), and the strife began in a serious style, and the boys
looking on were not cheated. Although I could not collect their shouts when
the blows were ringing upon me, it was no great loss; for John Fry told me
afterwards that their oaths went up like a furnace fire. But to these we paid
no heed or hap, being in the thick of swinging, and devoid of judgment. All
I know is, I came to my corner, when the round was over, with very hard
pumps in my chest, and a great desire to fall away.
“Time is up,” cried head-monitor, ere ever I got my breath again; and
when I fain would have lingered awhile on the knee of the boy that held me.
John Fry had come up, and the boys were laughing because he wanted a
stable lanthorn, and threatened to tell my mother.
“Time is up,” cried another boy, more headlong than head-monitor. “If
we count three before the come of thee, thwacked thou art, and must go to

the women.” I felt it hard upon me. He began to count, one, too, three—but
before the “three” was out of his mouth, I was facing my foe, with both
hands up, and my breath going rough and hot, and resolved to wait the turn
of it. For I had found seat on the knee of a boy sage and skilled to tutor me,
who knew how much the end very often differs from the beginning. A rare
ripe scholar he was; and now he hath routed up the Germans in the matter
of criticism. Sure the clever boys and men have most love towards the
stupid ones.
“Finish him off, Bob,” cried a big boy, and that I noticed especially,
because I thought it unkind of him, after eating of my toffee as he had that
afternoon; “finish him off, neck and crop; he deserves it for sticking up to a
man like you.”
But I was not so to be finished off, though feeling in my knuckles now
as if it were a blueness and a sense of chilblain. Nothing held except my
legs, and they were good to help me. So this bout, or round, if you please,
was foughten warily by me, with gentle recollection of what my tutor, the
clever boy, had told me, and some resolve to earn his praise before I came
back to his knee again. And never, I think, in all my life, sounded sweeter
words in my ears (except when my love loved me) than when my second
and backer, who had made himself part of my doings now, and would have
wept to see me beaten, said,—
“Famously done, Jack, famously! Only keep your wind up, Jack, and
you'll go right through him!”
Meanwhile John Fry was prowling about, asking the boys what they
thought of it, and whether I was like to be killed, because of my mother's
trouble. But finding now that I had foughten three-score fights already, he
came up to me woefully, in the quickness of my breathing, while I sat on
the knee of my second, with a piece of spongious coralline to ease me of
my bloodshed, and he says in my ears, as if he was clapping spurs into a
horse,—
“Never thee knack under, Jan, or never coom naigh Hexmoor no
more.”
With that it was all up with me. A simmering buzzed in my heavy
brain, and a light came through my eyeplaces. At once I set both fists again,
and my heart stuck to me like cobbler's wax. Either Robin Snell should kill
me, or I would conquer Robin Snell. So I went in again with my courage

up, and Bob came smiling for victory, and I hated him for smiling. He let at
me with his left hand, and I gave him my right between his eyes, and he
blinked, and was not pleased with it. I feared him not, and spared him not,
neither spared myself. My breath came again, and my heart stood cool, and
my eyes struck fire no longer. Only I knew that I would die sooner than
shame my birthplace. How the rest of it was I know not; only that I had the
end of it, and helped to put Robin in bed.

CHAPTER III
THE WAR-PATH OF THE DOONES

From Tiverton town to the town of Oare is a
very long and painful road, and in good truth the
traveller must make his way, as the saying is; for the
way is still unmade, at least, on this side of
Dulverton, although there is less danger now than in
the time of my schooling; for now a good horse may
go there without much cost of leaping, but when I
was a boy the spurs would fail, when needed most,
by reason of the slough-cake. It is to the credit of
this age, and our advance upon fatherly ways, that
now we have laid down rods and fagots, and even
stump-oaks here and there, so that a man in good daylight need not sink, if
he be quite sober. There is nothing I have striven at more than doing my
duty, way-warden over Exmoor.
But in those days, when I came from school (and good times they
were, too, full of a warmth and fine hearth-comfort, which now are dying
out), it was a sad and sorry business to find where lay the highway. We are
taking now to mark it off with a fence on either side, at least, when a town
is handy; but to me this seems of a high pretence, and a sort of landmark,
and channel for robbers, though well enough near London, where they have
earned a race-course.
We left the town of the two fords, which they say is the meaning of it,
very early in the morning, after lying one day to rest, as was demanded by
the nags, sore of foot and foundered. For my part, too, I was glad to rest,
having aches all over me, and very heavy bruises; and we lodged at the sign
of the White Horse Inn, in the street called Gold Street, opposite where the
souls are of John and Joan Greenway, set up in gold letters, because we
must take the homeward way at cockcrow of the morning. Though still John
Fry was dry with me of the reason of his coming, and only told lies about
father, and could not keep them agreeable, I hoped for the best, as all boys

will, especially after a victory. And I thought, perhaps father had sent for
me because he had a good harvest, and the rats were bad in the corn-
chamber.
It was high noon before we were got to Dulverton that day, near to
which town the river Exe and its big brother Barle have union. My mother
had an uncle living there, but we were not to visit his house this time, at
which I was somewhat astonished, since we needs must stop for at least two
hours, to bait our horses thorough well, before coming to the black bogway.
The bogs are very good in frost, except where the hot-springs rise; but as
yet there had been no frost this year, save just enough to make the
blackbirds look big in the morning. In a hearty black-frost they look small,
until the snow falls over them.
The road from Bampton to Dulverton had not been very delicate, yet
nothing to complain of much—no deeper, indeed, than the hocks of a horse,
except in the rotten places. The day was inclined to be mild and foggy, and
both nags sweated freely; but Peggy carrying little weight (for my wardrobe
was upon Smiler, and John Fry grumbling always), we could easily keep in
front, as far as you may hear a laugh.
John had been rather bitter with me, which methought was a mark of
ill taste at coming home for the holidays; and yet I made allowance for
John, because he had never been at school, and never would have chance to
eat fry upon condition of spelling it; therefore I rode on, thinking that he
was hard-set, like a saw, for his dinner, and would soften after tooth-work.
And yet at his most hungry times, when his mind was far gone upon bacon,
certes he seemed to check himself and look at me as if he were sorry for
little things coming over great.
But now, at Dulverton, we dined upon the rarest and choicest victuals
that ever I did taste. Even now, at my time of life, to think of it gives me
appetite, as once and awhile to think of my first love makes me love all
goodness. Hot mutton pasty was a thing I had often heard of from very
wealthy boys and men, who made a dessert of dinner; and to hear them talk
of it made my lips smack, and my ribs come inwards.
And now John Fry strode into the hostel, with the air and grace of a
short-legged man, and shouted as loud as if he was calling sheep upon
Exmoor,—

“Hot mooton pasty for twoo trarv'lers, at number vaive, in vaive
minnits! Dish un up in the tin with the grahvy, zame as I hardered last
Tuesday.”
Of course it did not come in five minutes, nor yet in ten or twenty; but
that made it all the better when it came to the real presence; and the smell of
it was enough to make an empty man thank God for the room there was
inside him. Fifty years have passed me quicker than the taste of that gravy.
It is the manner of all good boys to be careless of apparel, and take no
pride in adornment. Good lack, if I see a boy make to do about the fit of his
crumpler, and the creasing of his breeches, and desire to be shod for
comeliness rather than for use, I cannot 'scape the mark that God took
thought to make a girl of him. Not so when they grow older, and court the
regard of the maidens; then may the bravery pass from the inside to the
outside of them; and no bigger fools are they, even then, than their fathers
were before them. But God forbid any man to be a fool to love, and be
loved, as I have been. Else would he have prevented it.
When the mutton pasty was done, and Peggy and Smiler had dined
well also, out I went to wash at the pump, being a lover of soap and water,
at all risk, except of my dinner. And John Fry, who cared very little to wash,
save Sabbath days in his own soap, and who had kept me from the pump by
threatening loss of the dish, out he came in a satisfied manner, with a piece
of quill in his hand, to lean against a door-post, and listen to the horses
feeding, and have his teeth ready for supper.
Then a lady's-maid came out, and the sun was on her face, and she
turned round to go back again; but put a better face upon it, and gave a trip
and hitched her dress, and looked at the sun full body, lest the hostlers
should laugh that she was losing her complexion. With a long Italian glass
in her fingers very daintily, she came up to the pump in the middle of the
yard, where I was running the water off all my head and shoulders, and
arms, and some of my breast even, and though I had glimpsed her through
the sprinkle, it gave me quite a turn to see her, child as I was, in my open
aspect. But she looked at me, no whit abashed, making a baby of me, no
doubt, as a woman of thirty will do, even with a very big boy when they
catch him on a hayrick, and she said to me in a brazen manner, as if I had
been nobody, while I was shrinking behind the pump, and craving to get my
shirt on, “Good leetle boy, come hither to me. Fine heaven! how blue your

eyes are, and your skin like snow; but some naughty man has beaten it
black. Oh, leetle boy, let me feel it. Ah, how then it must have hurt you!
There now, and you shall love me.”
All this time she was touching my breast, here and there, very lightly,
with her delicate brown fingers, and I understood from her voice and
manner that she was not of this country, but a foreigner by extraction. And
then I was not so shy of her, because I could talk better English than she;
and yet I longed for my jerkin, but liked not to be rude to her.
“If you please, madam, I must go. John Fry is waiting by the tapster's
door, and Peggy neighing to me. If you please, we must get home to-night;
and father will be waiting for me this side of the telling-house.”
“There, there, you shall go, leetle dear, and perhaps I will go after you.
I have taken much love of you. But the baroness is hard to me. How far you
call it now to the bank of the sea at Wash—Wash—”
“At Watchett, likely you mean, madam. Oh, a very long way, and the
roads as soft as the road to Oare.”
“Oh-ah, oh-ah—I shall remember; that is the place where my leetle
boy live, and some day I will come seek for him. Now make the pump to
flow, my dear, and give me the good water. The baroness will not touch
unless a nebule be formed outside the glass.”
I did not know what she meant by that; yet I pumped for her very
heartily, and marvelled to see her for fifty times throw the water away in the
trough, as if it was not good enough. At last the water suited her, with a
likeness of fog outside the glass, and the gleam of a crystal under it, and
then she made a curtsey to me, in a sort of mocking manner, holding the
long glass by the foot, not to take the cloud off; and then she wanted to kiss
me; but I was out of breath, and have always been shy of that work, except
when I come to offer it; and so I ducked under the pump-handle, and she
knocked her chin on the knob of it; and the hostlers came out, and asked
whether they would do as well.
Upon this, she retreated up the yard, with a certain dark dignity, and a
foreign way of walking, which stopped them at once from going farther,
because it was so different from the fashion of their sweethearts. One with
another they hung back, where half a cart-load of hay was, and they looked
to be sure that she would not turn round; and then each one laughed at the
rest of them.

Now, up to the end of Dulverton town, on the northward side of it,
where the two new pig-sties be, the Oare folk and the Watchett folk must
trudge on together, until we come to a broken cross, where a murdered man
lies buried. Peggy and Smiler went up the hill, as if nothing could be too
much for them, after the beans they had eaten, and suddenly turning a
corner of trees, we happened upon a great coach and six horses labouring
very heavily. John Fry rode on with his hat in his hand, as became him
towards the quality; but I was amazed to that degree, that I left my cap on
my head, and drew bridle without knowing it.

For in the front seat of the coach, which was half-way open, being of
the city-make, and the day in want of air, sate the foreign lady, who had met
me at the pump and offered to salute me. By her side was a little girl, dark-
haired and very wonderful, with a wealthy softness on her, as if she must
have her own way. I could not look at her for two glances, and she did not
look at me for one, being such a little child, and busy with the hedges. But
in the honourable place sate a handsome lady, very warmly dressed, and
sweetly delicate of colour. And close to her was a lively child, two or it may
be three years old, bearing a white cockade in his hat, and staring at all and
everybody. Now, he saw Peggy, and took such a liking to her, that the lady
his mother—if so she were—was forced to look at my pony and me. And,
to tell the truth, although I am not of those who adore the high folk, she

looked at us very kindly, and with a sweetness rarely found in the women
who milk the cows for us.
Then I took off my cap to the beautiful lady, without asking wherefore;
and she put up her hand and kissed it to me, thinking, perhaps, that I looked
like a gentle and good little boy; for folk always called me innocent, though
God knows I never was that. But now the foreign lady, or lady's maid, as it
might be, who had been busy with little dark eyes, turned upon all this
going-on, and looked me straight in the face. I was about to salute her, at a
distance, indeed, and not with the nicety she had offered to me, but, strange
to say, she stared at my eyes as if she had never seen me before, neither
wished to see me again. At this I was so startled, such things being out of
my knowledge, that I startled Peggy also with the muscle of my legs, and
she being fresh from stable, and the mire scraped off with cask-hoop, broke
away so suddenly that I could do no more than turn round and lower my
cap, now five months old, to the beautiful lady. Soon I overtook John Fry,
and asked him all about them, and how it was that we had missed their
starting from the hostel. But John would never talk much till after a gallon
of cider; and all that I could win out of him was that they were “murdering
Papishers,” and little he cared to do with them, or the devil, as they came
from. And a good thing for me, and a providence, that I was gone down
Dulverton town to buy sweetstuff for Annie, else my stupid head would
have gone astray with their great out-coming.
We saw no more of them after that, but turned into the sideway; and
soon had the fill of our hands and eyes to look to our own going. For the
road got worse and worse, until there was none at all, and perhaps the
purest thing it could do was to be ashamed to show itself. But we pushed on
as best we might, with doubt of reaching home any time, except by special
grace of God.
The fog came down upon the moors as thick as ever I saw it; and there
was no sound of any sort, nor a breath of wind to guide us. The little stubby
trees that stand here and there, like bushes with a wooden leg to them, were
drizzled with a mess of wet, and hung their points with dropping. Wherever
the butt-end of a hedgerow came up from the hollow ground, like the
withers of a horse, holes of splash were pocked and pimpled in the yellow
sand of coneys, or under the dwarf tree's ovens. But soon it was too dark to

see that, or anything else, I may say, except the creases in the dusk, where
prisoned light crept up the valleys.
After awhile even that was gone, and no other comfort left us except to
see our horses' heads jogging to their footsteps, and the dark ground pass
below us, lighter where the wet was; and then the splash, foot after foot,
more clever than we can do it, and the orderly jerk of the tail, and the smell
of what a horse is.
John Fry was bowing forward with sleep upon his saddle, and now I
could no longer see the frizzle of wet upon his beard—for he had a very
brave one, of a bright red colour, and trimmed into a whale-oil knot,
because he was newly married—although that comb of hair had been a
subject of some wonder to me, whether I, in God's good time, should have
the like of that, handsomely set with shining beads, small above and large
below, from the weeping of the heaven. But still I could see the jog of his
hat—a Sunday hat with a top to it—and some of his shoulder bowed out in
the mist, so that one could say “Hold up, John,” when Smiler put his foot in.
“Mercy of God! where be us now?” said John Fry, waking suddenly; “us
ought to have passed hold hash, Jan. Zeen it on the road, have 'ee?”
“No indeed, John; no old ash. Nor nothing
else to my knowing; nor heard nothing, save
thee snoring.”
“Watt a vule thee must be then, Jan; and
me myzell no better. Harken, lad, harken!”
We drew our horses up and listened,
through the thickness of the air, and with our
hands laid to our ears. At first there was nothing
to hear, except the panting of the horses and the
trickle of the eaving drops from our head-
covers and clothing, and the soft sounds of the
lonely night, that make us feel, and try not to
think. Then there came a mellow noise, very low and mournsome, not a
sound to be afraid of, but to long to know the meaning, with a soft rise of
the hair. Three times it came and went again, as the shaking of a thread
might pass away into the distance; and then I touched John Fry to know that
there was something near me.

“Doon't 'e be a vule, Jan! Vaine moozick as iver I 'eer. God bless the
man as made un doo it.”
“Have they hanged one of the Doones then, John?”
“Hush, lad; niver talk laike o' thiccy. Hang a Doone! God knoweth, the
King would hang pretty quick if her did.”
“Then who is it in the chains, John?”
I felt my spirit rise as I asked; for now I had crossed Exmoor so often
as to hope that the people sometimes deserved it, and think that it might be
a lesson to the rogues who unjustly loved the mutton they were never born
to. But, of course, they were born to hanging, when they set themselves so
high.
“It be nawbody,” said John, “vor us to make a fush about. Belong to
t'other zide o' the moor, and come staling shape to our zide. Red Jem
Hannaford his name. Thank God for him to be hanged, lad; and good cess
to his soul for craikin' zo.”
So the sound of the quiet swinging led us very modestly, as it came
and went on the wind, loud and low pretty regularly, even as far as the foot
of the gibbet where the four cross-ways are.
“Vamous job this here,” cried John, looking up to be sure of it, because
there were so many; “here be my own nick on the post. Red Jem, too, and
no doubt of him; he do hang so handsome like, and his ribs up laike a horse
a'most. God bless them as discoovered the way to make a rogue so useful.
Good-naight to thee, Jem, my lad; and not break thy drames with the
craikin'.”
John Fry shook his bridle-arm, and smote upon Smiler merrily, as he
jogged into the homeward track from the guiding of the body. But I was
sorry for Red Jem, and wanted to know more about him, and whether he
might not have avoided this miserable end, and what his wife and children
thought of it, if, indeed, he had any.
But John would talk no more about it; and perhaps he was moved with
a lonesome feeling, as the creaking sound came after us.
“Hould thee tongue, lad,' he said sharply; 'us be naigh the Doone-track
now, two maile from Dunkery Beacon hill, the haighest place of Hexmoor.
So happen they be abroad to-naight, us must crawl on our belly-places,
boy.”

I knew at once what he meant—those bloody Doones of Bagworthy,
the awe of all Devon and Somerset, outlaws, traitors, murderers. My little
legs began to tremble to and fro upon Peggy's sides, as I heard the dead
robber in chains behind us, and thought of the live ones still in front.
“But, John,” I whispered warily, sidling close to his saddle-bow; “dear
John, you don't think they will see us in such a fog as this?”
“Never God made vog as could stop their eyesen,” he whispered in
answer, fearfully; “here us be by the hollow ground. Zober, lad, goo zober
now, if thee wish to see thy moother.”
For I was inclined, in the manner of boys, to make a run of the danger,
and cross the Doone-track at full speed; to rush for it, and be done with it.
But even then I wondered why he talked of my mother so, and said not a
word of father.
We were come to a long deep “goyal,” as they call it on Exmoor, a
word whose fountain and origin I have nothing to do with. Only I know that
when little boys laughed at me at Tiverton, for talking about a “goyal,” a
big boy clouted them on the head, and said that it was in Homer, and meant
the hollow of the hand. And another time a Welshman told me that it must
be something like the thing they call a “pant” in those parts. Still I know
what it means well enough—to wit, a long trough among wild hills, falling
towards the plain country, rounded at the bottom, perhaps, and stiff, more
than steep, at the sides of it. Whether it be straight or crooked, makes no
difference to it.
We rode very carefully down our side, and through the soft grass at the
bottom, and all the while we listened as if the air was a speaking-trumpet.
Then gladly we breasted our nags to the rise, and were coming to the comb
of it, when I heard something, and caught John's arm, and he bent his hand
to the shape of his ear. It was the sound of horses' feet knocking up through
splashy ground, as if the bottom sucked them. Then a grunting of weary
men, and the lifting noise of stirrups, and sometimes the clank of iron
mixed with the wheezy croning of leather and the blowing of hairy nostrils.
“God's sake, Jack, slip round her belly, and let her go where she wull.”
As John Fry whispered, so I did, for he was off Smiler by this time; but
our two pads were too fagged to go far, and began to nose about and crop,
sniffing more than they need have done. I crept to John's side very softly,
with the bridle on my arm.

“Let goo braidle; let goo, lad. Plaise God they take them for forest-
ponies, or they'll zend a bullet through us.”
I saw what he meant, and let go the bridle; for now the mist was
rolling off, and we were against the sky-line to the dark cavalcade below us.
John lay on the ground by a barrow of heather, where a little gullet was, and
I crept to him, afraid of the noise I made in dragging my legs along, and the
creak of my cord breeches. John bleated like a sheep to cover it—a sheep
very cold and trembling.
Then just as the foremost horseman passed, scarce twenty yards below
us, a puff of wind came up the glen, and the fog rolled off before it. And
suddenly a strong red light, cast by the cloud-weight downwards, spread
like fingers over the moorland, opened the alleys of darkness, and hung on
the steel of the riders.
“Dunkery Beacon,” whispered John, so close into my ear, that I felt his
lips and teeth ashake; “dursn't fire it now except to show the Doones way
home again, since the naight as they went up and throwed the watchmen
atop of it. Why, wutt be 'bout, lad? God's sake—”
For I could keep still no longer, but wriggled away from his arm, and
along the little gullet, still going flat on my breast and thighs, until I was
under a grey patch of stone, with a fringe of dry fern round it; there I lay,
scarce twenty feet above the heads of the riders, and I feared to draw my
breath, though prone to do it with wonder.
For now the beacon was rushing up, in a fiery storm to heaven, and the
form of its flame came and went in the folds, and the heavy sky was
hovering. All around it was hung with red, deep in twisted columns, and
then a giant beard of fire streamed throughout the darkness. The sullen hills
were flanked with light, and the valleys chined with shadow, and all the
sombrous moors between awoke in furrowed anger.
But most of all the flinging fire leaped into the rocky mouth of the glen
below me, where the horsemen passed in silence, scarcely deigning to look
round. Heavy men and large of stature, reckless how they bore their guns,
or how they sate their horses, with leathern jerkins, and long boots, and iron
plates on breast and head, plunder heaped behind their saddles, and flagons
slung in front of them; I counted more than thirty pass, like clouds upon red
sunset. Some had carcasses of sheep swinging with their skins on, others
had deer, and one had a child flung across his saddle-bow. Whether the

child were dead, or alive, was more than I could tell, only it hung head
downwards there, and must take the chance of it. They had got the child, a
very young one, for the sake of the dress, no doubt, which they could not
stop to pull off from it; for the dress shone bright, where the fire struck it, as
if with gold and jewels. I longed in my heart to know most sadly what they
would do with the little thing, and whether they would eat it.
It touched me so to see that child, a prey among those vultures, that in
my foolish rage and burning I stood up and shouted to them leaping on a
rock, and raving out of all possession. Two of them turned round, and one
set his carbine at me, but the other said it was but a pixie, and bade him
keep his powder. Little they knew, and less thought I, that the pixie then
before them would dance their castle down one day.

John Fry, who in the spring of fright had brought himself down from
Smiler's side, as if he were dipped in oil, now came up to me, all risk being

over, cross, and stiff, and aching sorely from his wet couch of heather.
“Small thanks to thee, Jan, as my new waife bain't a widder. And who
be you to zupport of her, and her son, if she have one? Zarve thee right if I
was to chuck thee down into the Doone-track. Zim thee'll come to un,
zooner or later, if this be the zample of thee.”
And that was all he had to say, instead of thanking God! For if ever
born man was in a fright, and ready to thank God for anything, the name of
that man was John Fry not more than five minutes agone.
However, I answered nothing at all, except to be ashamed of myself;
and soon we found Peggy and Smiler in company, well embarked on the
homeward road, and victualling where the grass was good. Right glad they
were to see us again—not for the pleasure of carrying, but because a horse
(like a woman) lacks, and is better without, self-reliance.
My father never came to meet us, at either side of the telling-house,
neither at the crooked post, nor even at home-linhay although the dogs kept
such a noise that he must have heard us. Home-side of the linhay, and under
the ashen hedge-row, where father taught me to catch blackbirds, all at once
my heart went down, and all my breast was hollow. There was not even the
lanthorn light on the peg against the cow's house, and nobody said “Hold
your noise!” to the dogs, or shouted “Here our Jack is!”
I looked at the posts of the gate, in the dark, because they were tall,
like father, and then at the door of the harness-room, where he used to
smoke his pipe and sing. Then I thought he had guests perhaps—people lost
upon the moors—whom he could not leave unkindly, even for his son's
sake. And yet about that I was jealous, and ready to be vexed with him,
when he should begin to make much of me. And I felt in my pocket for the
new pipe which I had brought him from Tiverton, and said to myself, “He
shall not have it until to-morrow morning.”
Woe is me! I cannot tell. How I knew I know not now—only that I
slunk away, without a tear, or thought of weeping, and hid me in a saw-pit.
There the timber, over-head, came like streaks across me; and all I wanted
was to lack, and none to tell me anything.
By-and-by, a noise came down, as of woman's weeping; and there my
mother and sister were, choking and holding together. Although they were
my dearest loves, I could not bear to look at them, until they seemed to
want my help, and put their hands before their eyes.

CHAPTER IV
A VERY RASH VISIT

My dear father had been killed by the Doones
of Bagworthy, while riding home from Porlock
market, on the Saturday evening. With him were six
brother-farmers, all of them very sober; for father
would have no company with any man who went
beyond half a gallon of beer, or a single gallon of
cider. The robbers had no grudge against him; for he
had never flouted them, neither made overmuch of
outcry, because they robbed other people. For he
was a man of such strict honesty, and due parish
feeling, that he knew it to be every man's own
business to defend himself and his goods; unless he belonged to our parish,
and then we must look after him.
These seven good farmers were jogging along, helping one another in
the troubles of the road, and singing goodly hymns and songs to keep their
courage moving, when suddenly a horseman stopped in the starlight full
across them.
By dress and arms they knew him well, and by his size and stature,
shown against the glimmer of the evening star; and though he seemed one
man to seven, it was in truth one man to one. Of the six who had been
singing songs and psalms about the power of God, and their own
regeneration—such psalms as went the round, in those days, of the public-
houses—there was not one but pulled out his money, and sang small beer to
a Doone.
But father had been used to think that any man who was comfortable
inside his own coat and waistcoat deserved to have no other set, unless he
would strike a blow for them. And so, while his gossips doffed their hats,
and shook with what was left of them, he set his staff above his head, and
rode at the Doone robber. With a trick of his horse, the wild man escaped
the sudden onset, although it must have amazed him sadly that any durst

resist him. Then when Smiler was carried away with the dash and the
weight of my father (not being brought up to battle, nor used to turn, save in
plough harness), the outlaw whistled upon his thumb, and plundered the rest
of the yeoman. But father, drawing at Smiler's head, to try to come back and
help them, was in the midst of a dozen men, who seemed to come out of a
turf-rick, some on horse, and some a-foot. Nevertheless, he smote lustily, so
far as he could see; and being of great size and strength, and his blood well
up, they had no easy job with him. With the play of his wrist, he cracked
three or four crowns, being always famous at single-stick; until the rest
drew their horses away, and he thought that he was master, and would tell
his wife about it.

But a man beyond the range of staff was crouching by the peat-stack,
with a long gun set to his shoulder, and he got poor father against the sky,
and I cannot tell the rest of it. Only they knew that Smiler came home, with
blood upon his withers, and father was found in the morning dead on the
moor, with his ivy-twisted cudgel lying broken under him. Now, whether
this were an honest fight, God judge betwixt the Doones and me.

It was more of woe than wonder, being such days of violence, that
mother knew herself a widow, and her children fatherless. Of children there
were only three, none of us fit to be useful yet, only to comfort mother, by
making her to work for us. I, John Ridd, was the eldest, and felt it a heavy
thing on me; next came sister Annie, with about two years between us; and
then the little Eliza.
Now, before I got home and found my sad loss—and no boy ever
loved his father more than I loved mine—mother had done a most
wondrous thing, which made all the neighbours say that she must be mad, at
least. Upon the Monday morning, while her husband lay unburied, she cast
a white hood over her hair, and gathered a black cloak round her, and,
taking counsel of no one, set off on foot for the Doone-gate.
In the early afternoon she came to the hollow and barren entrance,
where in truth there was no gate, only darkness to go through. If I get on
with this story, I shall have to tell of it by-and-by, as I saw it afterwards; and
will not dwell there now. Enough that no gun was fired at her, only her eyes
were covered over, and somebody led her by the hand, without any wish to
hurt her.
A very rough and headstrong road was all that she remembered, for she
could not think as she wished to do, with the cold iron pushed against her.
At the end of this road they delivered her eyes, and she could scarce believe
them.
For she stood at the head of a deep green valley, carved from out the
mountains in a perfect oval, with a fence of sheer rock standing round it,
eighty feet or a hundred high; from whose brink black wooded hills swept

up to the sky-line. By her side a little river glided out from underground
with a soft dark babble, unawares of daylight; then growing brighter, lapsed
away, and fell into the valley. Then, as it ran down the meadow, alders stood
on either marge, and grass was blading out upon it, and yellow tufts of
rushes gathered, looking at the hurry. But further down, on either bank,
were covered houses built of stone, square and roughly cornered, set as if
the brook were meant to be the street between them. Only one room high
they were, and not placed opposite each other, but in and out as skittles are;
only that the first of all, which proved to be the captain's, was a sort of
double house, or rather two houses joined together by a plank-bridge, over
the river.
Fourteen cots my mother counted, all very much of a pattern, and
nothing to choose between them, unless it were the captain's. Deep in the
quiet valley there, away from noise, and violence, and brawl, save that of
the rivulet, any man would have deemed them homes of simple mind and
innocence. Yet not a single house stood there but was the home of murder.
Two men led my mother down a steep and gliddery stair-way, like the
ladder of a hay-mow; and thence from the break of the falling water as far
as the house of the captain. And there at the door they left her trembling,
strung as she was, to speak her mind.
Now, after all, what right had she, a common farmer's widow, to take it
amiss that men of birth thought fit to kill her husband. And the Doones were
of very high birth, as all we clods of Exmoor knew; and we had enough of
good teaching now—let any man say the contrary—to feel that all we had
belonged of right to those above us. Therefore my mother was half-ashamed
that she could not help complaining.
But after a little while, as she said, remembrance of her husband came,
and the way he used to stand by her side and put his strong arm round her,
and how he liked his bacon fried, and praised her kindly for it—and so the
tears were in her eyes, and nothing should gainsay them.
A tall old man, Sir Ensor Doone, came out with a bill-hook in his hand,
hedger's gloves going up his arms, as if he were no better than a labourer at
ditch-work. Only in his mouth and eyes, his gait, and most of all his voice,
even a child could know and feel that here was no ditch-labourer. Good
cause he has found since then, perhaps, to wish that he had been one.

With his white locks moving upon his coat, he stopped and looked
down at my mother, and she could not help herself but curtsey under the
fixed black gazing.
“Good woman, you are none of us. Who has brought you hither?
Young men must be young—but I have had too much of this work.”
And he scowled at my mother, for her comeliness; and yet looked
under his eyelids as if he liked her for it. But as for her, in her depth of love-
grief, it struck scorn upon her womanhood; and in the flash she spoke.
“What you mean I know not. Traitors! cut-throats! cowards! I am here
to ask for my husband.” She could not say any more, because her heart was
now too much for her, coming hard in her throat and mouth; but she opened
up her eyes at him.
“Madam,” said Sir Ensor Doone—being born a gentleman, although a
very bad one—“I crave pardon of you. My eyes are old, or I might have
known. Now, if we have your husband prisoner, he shall go free without
ransoms, because I have insulted you.”
“Sir,” said my mother, being suddenly taken away with sorrow,
because of his gracious manner, “please to let me cry a bit.”
He stood away, and seemed to know that women want no help for that.
And by the way she cried he knew that they had killed her husband. Then,
having felt of grief himself, he was not angry with her, but left her to begin
again.
“Loth would I be,” said mother, sobbing with her new red
handkerchief, and looking at the pattern of it, “loth indeed, Sir Ensor
Doone, to accuse any one unfairly. But I have lost the very best husband
God ever gave to a woman; and I knew him when he was to your belt, and I
not up to your knee, sir; and never an unkind word he spoke, nor stopped
me short in speaking. All the herbs he left to me, and all the bacon-curing,
and when it was best to kill a pig, and how to treat the maidens. Not that I
would ever wish—oh, John, it seems so strange to me, and last week you
were everything.”
Here mother burst out crying again, not loudly, but turning quietly,
because she knew that no one now would ever care to wipe the tears. And
fifty or a hundred things, of weekly and daily happening, came across my
mother, so that her spirit fell like slackening lime.

“This matter must be seen to; it shall be seen to at once,” the old man
answered, moved a little in spite of all his knowledge. “Madam, if any
wrong has been done, trust the honour of a Doone; I will redress it to my
utmost. Come inside and rest yourself, while I ask about it. What was your
good husband's name, and when and where fell this mishap?”
“Deary me,” said mother, as he set a chair for her very polite, but she
would not sit upon it; “Saturday morning I was a wife, sir; and Saturday
night I was a widow, and my children fatherless. My husband's name was
John Ridd, sir, as everybody knows; and there was not a finer or better man
in Somerset or Devon. He was coming home from Porlock market, and a
new gown for me on the crupper, and a shell to put my hair up—oh, John,
how good you were to me!”
Of that she began to think again, and not to believe her sorrow, except
as a dream from the evil one, because it was too bad upon her, and perhaps
she would awake in a minute, and her husband would have the laugh of her.
And so she wiped her eyes and smiled, and looked for something.
“Madam, this is a serious thing,” Sir Ensor Doone said graciously, and
showing grave concern: “my boys are a little wild, I know. And yet I cannot
think that they would willingly harm any one. And yet—and yet, you do
look wronged. Send Counsellor to me,” he shouted, from the door of his
house; and down the valley went the call, “Send Counsellor to Captain.”
Counsellor Doone came in ere yet my mother was herself again; and if
any sight could astonish her when all her sense of right and wrong was gone
astray with the force of things, it was the sight of the Counsellor. A square-
built man of enormous strength, but a foot below the Doone stature (which I
shall describe hereafter), he carried a long grey beard descending to the
leather of his belt. Great eyebrows overhung his face, like ivy on a pollard
oak, and under them two large brown eyes, as of an owl when muting. And
he had a power of hiding his eyes, or showing them bright, like a blazing
fire. He stood there with his beaver off, and mother tried to look at him, but
he seemed not to descry her.
“Counsellor,” said Sir Ensor Doone, standing back in his height from
him, “here is a lady of good repute—”
“Oh, no, sir; only a woman.”

“Allow me, madam, by your good leave. Here is a lady, Counsellor, of
great repute in this part of the country, who charges the Doones with having
unjustly slain her husband—”
“Murdered him! murdered him!” cried my mother, “if ever there was a
murder. Oh, sir! oh, sir! you know it.”
“The perfect rights and truth of the case is all I wish to know,” said the
old man, very loftily: “and justice shall be done, madam.”
“Oh, I pray you—pray you, sirs, make no matter of business of it. God
from Heaven, look on me!”
“Put the case,” said the Counsellor.
“The case is this,” replied Sir Ensor, holding one hand up to mother:
“This lady's worthy husband was slain, it seems, upon his return from the

market at Porlock, no longer ago than last Saturday night. Madam, amend
me if I am wrong.”
“No longer, indeed, indeed, sir. Sometimes it seems a twelvemonth,
and sometimes it seems an hour.”
“Cite his name,” said the Counsellor, with his eyes still rolling
inwards.
“Master John Ridd, as I understand. Counsellor, we have heard of him
often; a worthy man and a peaceful one, who meddled not with our duties.
Now, if any of our boys have been rough, they shall answer it dearly. And
yet I can scarce believe it. For the folk about these parts are apt to
misconceive of our sufferings, and to have no feeling for us. Counsellor,
you are our record, and very stern against us; tell us how this matter was.”
“Oh, Counsellor!” my mother cried; “Sir Counsellor, you will be fair: I
see it in your countenance. Only tell me who it was, and set me face to face
with him, and I will bless you, sir, and God shall bless you, and my
children.”
The square man with the long grey beard, quite unmoved by anything,
drew back to the door and spoke, and his voice was like a fall of stones in
the bottom of a mine.
“Few words will be enow for this. Four or five of our best-behaved
and most peaceful gentlemen went to the little market at Porlock with a
lump of money. They bought some household stores and comforts at a very
high price, and pricked upon the homeward road, away from vulgar
revellers. When they drew bridle to rest their horses, in the shelter of a peat-
rick, the night being dark and sudden, a robber of great size and strength
rode into the midst of them, thinking to kill or terrify. His arrogance and
hardihood at the first amazed them, but they would not give up without a
blow goods which were on trust with them. He had smitten three of them
senseless, for the power of his arm was terrible; whereupon the last man
tried to ward his blow with a pistol. Carver, sir, it was, our brave and noble
Carver, who saved the lives of his brethren and his own; and glad enow
they were to escape. Notwithstanding, we hoped it might be only a flesh-
wound, and not to speed him in his sins.”
As this atrocious tale of lies turned up joint by joint before her, like a
“devil's coach-horse,” * mother was too much amazed to do any more than
look at him, as if the earth must open. But the only thing that opened was

the great brown eyes of the Counsellor, which rested on my mother's face
with a dew of sorrow, as he spoke of sins.
* The cock-tailed beetle has earned this name in the West of England.
She, unable to bear them, turned suddenly on Sir Ensor, and caught (as
she fancied) a smile on his lips, and a sense of quiet enjoyment.
“All the Doones are gentlemen,” answered the old man gravely, and
looking as if he had never smiled since he was a baby. “We are always glad
to explain, madam, any mistake which the rustic people may fall upon
about us; and we wish you clearly to conceive that we do not charge your
poor husband with any set purpose of robbery, neither will we bring suit for
any attainder of his property. Is it not so, Counsellor?”
“Without doubt his land is attainted; unless is mercy you forbear, sir.”
“Counsellor, we will forbear. Madam, we will forgive him. Like
enough he knew not right from wrong, at that time of night. The waters are
strong at Porlock, and even an honest man may use his staff unjustly in this
unchartered age of violence and rapine.”
The Doones to talk of rapine! Mother's head went round so that she
curtseyed to them both, scarcely knowing where she was, but calling to
mind her manners. All the time she felt a warmth, as if the right was with
her, and yet she could not see the way to spread it out before them. With
that, she dried her tears in haste and went into the cold air, for fear of
speaking mischief.
But when she was on the homeward road, and the sentinels had charge
of her, blinding her eyes, as if she were not blind enough with weeping,
some one came in haste behind her, and thrust a heavy leathern bag into the
limp weight of her hand.
“Captain sends you this,” he whispered; “take it to the little ones.”
But mother let it fall in a heap, as if it had been a blind worm; and then
for the first time crouched before God, that even the Doones should pity
her.

CHAPTER V
AN ILLEGAL SETTLEMENT

Good folk who dwell in a lawful land, if any
such there be, may for want of exploration, judge
our neighbourhood harshly, unless the whole truth is
set before them. In bar of such prejudice, many of
us ask leave to explain how and why it was the
robbers came to that head in the midst of us. We
would rather not have had it so, God knows as well
as anybody; but it grew upon us gently, in the
following manner. Only let all who read observe
that here I enter many things which came to my
knowledge in later years.
In or about the year of our Lord 1640, when all the troubles of England
were swelling to an outburst, great estates in the North country were
suddenly confiscated, through some feud of families and strong influence at
Court, and the owners were turned upon the world, and might think
themselves lucky to save their necks. These estates were in co-heirship,
joint tenancy I think they called it, although I know not the meaning, only
so that if either tenant died, the other living, all would come to the live one
in spite of any testament.
One of the joint owners was Sir Ensor Doone, a gentleman of brisk
intellect; and the other owner was his cousin, the Earl of Lorne and
Dykemont.
Lord Lorne was some years the elder of his cousin, Ensor Doone, and
was making suit to gain severance of the cumbersome joint tenancy by any
fair apportionment, when suddenly this blow fell on them by wiles and
woman's meddling; and instead of dividing the land, they were divided
from it.
The nobleman was still well-to-do, though crippled in his expenditure;
but as for the cousin, he was left a beggar, with many to beg from him. He

thought that the other had wronged him, and that all the trouble of law
befell through his unjust petition. Many friends advised him to make
interest at Court; for having done no harm whatever, and being a good
Catholic, which Lord Lorne was not, he would be sure to find hearing there,
and probably some favour. But he, like a very hot-brained man, although he
had long been married to the daughter of his cousin (whom he liked none
the more for that), would have nothing to say to any attempt at making a
patch of it, but drove away with his wife and sons, and the relics of his
money, swearing hard at everybody. In this he may have been quite wrong;
probably, perhaps, he was so; but I am not convinced at all but what most of
us would have done the same.
Some say that, in the bitterness of that wrong and outrage, he slew a
gentleman of the Court, whom he supposed to have borne a hand in the
plundering of his fortunes. Others say that he bearded King Charles the
First himself, in a manner beyond forgiveness. One thing, at any rate, is
sure—Sir Ensor was attainted, and made a felon outlaw, through some
violent deed ensuing upon his dispossession.
He had searched in many quarters for somebody to help him, and with
good warrant for hoping it, inasmuch as he, in lucky days, had been open-
handed and cousinly to all who begged advice of him. But now all these
provided him with plenty of good advice indeed, and great assurance of
feeling, but not a movement of leg, or lip, or purse-string in his favour. All
good people of either persuasion, royalty or commonalty, knowing his
kitchen-range to be cold, no longer would play turnspit. And this, it may be,
seared his heart more than loss of land and fame.
In great despair at last, he resolved to settle in some outlandish part,
where none could be found to know him; and so, in an evil day for us, he
came to the West of England. Not that our part of the world is at all
outlandish, according to my view of it (for I never found a better one), but
that it was known to be rugged, and large, and desolate. And here, when he
had discovered a place which seemed almost to be made for him, so
withdrawn, so self-defended, and uneasy of access, some of the country-
folk around brought him little offerings—a side of bacon, a keg of cider,
hung mutton, or a brisket of venison; so that for a little while he was very
honest. But when the newness of his coming began to wear away, and our
good folk were apt to think that even a gentleman ought to work or pay

other men for doing it, and many farmers were grown weary of manners
without discourse to them, and all cried out to one another how unfair it was
that owning such a fertile valley young men would not spade or plough by
reason of noble lineage—then the young Doones growing up took things
they would not ask for.
And here let me, as a solid man, owner of five hundred acres (whether
fenced or otherwise, and that is my own business), churchwarden also of
this parish (until I go to the churchyard), and proud to be called the parson's
friend—for a better man I never knew with tobacco and strong waters, nor
one who could read the lessons so well and he has been at Blundell's too—
once for all let me declare, that I am a thorough-going Church-and-State
man, and Royalist, without any mistake about it. And this I lay down,
because some people judging a sausage by the skin, may take in evil part
my little glosses of style and glibness, and the mottled nature of my remarks
and cracks now and then on the frying-pan. I assure them I am good inside,
and not a bit of rue in me; only queer knots, as of marjoram, and a stupid
manner of bursting.
There was not more than a dozen of them, counting a few retainers
who still held by Sir Ensor; but soon they grew and multiplied in a manner
surprising to think of. Whether it was the venison, which we call a
strengthening victual, or whether it was the Exmoor mutton, or the keen
soft air of the moorlands, anyhow the Doones increased much faster than
their honesty. At first they had brought some ladies with them, of good
repute with charity; and then, as time went on, they added to their stock by
carrying. They carried off many good farmers' daughters, who were sadly
displeased at first; but took to them kindly after awhile, and made a new
home in their babies. For women, as it seems to me, like strong men more
than weak ones, feeling that they need some staunchness, something to hold
fast by.
And of all the men in our country, although we are of a thick-set breed,
you scarce could find one in three-score fit to be placed among the Doones,
without looking no more than a tailor. Like enough, we could meet them
man for man (if we chose all around the crown and the skirts of Exmoor),
and show them what a cross-buttock means, because we are so stuggy; but
in regard of stature, comeliness, and bearing, no woman would look twice

at us. Not but what I myself, John Ridd, and one or two I know of—but it
becomes me best not to talk of that, although my hair is gray.
Perhaps their den might well have been stormed, and themselves
driven out of the forest, if honest people had only agreed to begin with them
at once when first they took to plundering. But having respect for their good
birth, and pity for their misfortunes, and perhaps a little admiration at the
justice of God, that robbed men now were robbers, the squires, and farmers,
and shepherds, at first did nothing more than grumble gently, or even make
a laugh of it, each in the case of others. After awhile they found the matter
gone too far for laughter, as violence and deadly outrage stained the hand of
robbery, until every woman clutched her child, and every man turned pale at
the very name of Doone. For the sons and grandsons of Sir Ensor grew up
in foul liberty, and haughtiness, and hatred, to utter scorn of God and man,
and brutality towards dumb animals. There was only one good thing about
them, if indeed it were good, to wit, their faith to one another, and truth to
their wild eyry. But this only made them feared the more, so certain was the
revenge they wreaked upon any who dared to strike a Doone. One night,
some ten years ere I was born, when they were sacking a rich man's house
not very far from Minehead, a shot was fired at them in the dark, of which
they took little notice, and only one of them knew that any harm was done.
But when they were well on the homeward road, not having slain either
man or woman, or even burned a house down, one of their number fell from
his saddle, and died without so much as a groan. The youth had been struck,
but would not complain, and perhaps took little heed of the wound, while he
was bleeding inwardly. His brothers and cousins laid him softly on a bank
of whortle-berries, and just rode back to the lonely hamlet where he had
taken his death-wound. No man nor woman was left in the morning, nor
house for any to dwell in, only a child with its reason gone.*

*This vile deed was done, beyond all doubt.

This affair made prudent people find more reason to let them alone
than to meddle with them; and now they had so entrenched themselves, and
waxed so strong in number, that nothing less than a troop of soldiers could
wisely enter their premises; and even so it might turn out ill, as perchance
we shall see by-and-by.

For not to mention the strength of the place, which I shall describe in
its proper order when I come to visit it, there was not one among them but
was a mighty man, straight and tall, and wide, and fit to lift four
hundredweight. If son or grandson of old Doone, or one of the northern
retainers, failed at the age of twenty, while standing on his naked feet to
touch with his forehead the lintel of Sir Ensor's door, and to fill the door
frame with his shoulders from sidepost even to sidepost, he was led away to
the narrow pass which made their valley so desperate, and thrust from the
crown with ignominy, to get his own living honestly. Now, the measure of
that doorway is, or rather was, I ought to say, six feet and one inch
lengthwise, and two feet all but two inches taken crossways in the clear. Yet
I not only have heard but know, being so closely mixed with them, that no
descendant of old Sir Ensor, neither relative of his (except, indeed, the
Counsellor, who was kept by them for his wisdom), and no more than two
of their following ever failed of that test, and relapsed to the difficult ways
of honesty.
Not that I think anything great of a standard the like of that: for if they
had set me in that door-frame at the age of twenty, it is like enough that I
should have walked away with it on my shoulders, though I was not come
to my full strength then: only I am speaking now of the average size of our
neighbourhood, and the Doones were far beyond that. Moreover, they were
taught to shoot with a heavy carbine so delicately and wisely, that even a
boy could pass a ball through a rabbit's head at the distance of fourscore
yards. Some people may think nought of this, being in practice with longer
shots from the tongue than from the shoulder; nevertheless, to do as above
is, to my ignorance, very good work, if you can be sure to do it. Not one
word do I believe of Robin Hood splitting peeled wands at seven-score
yards, and such like. Whoever wrote such stories knew not how slippery a
peeled wand is, even if one could hit it, and how it gives to the onset. Now,
let him stick one in the ground, and take his bow and arrow at it, ten yards
away, or even five.
Now, after all this which I have written, and all the rest which a reader
will see, being quicker of mind than I am (who leave more than half behind
me, like a man sowing wheat, with his dinner laid in the ditch too near his
dog), it is much but what you will understand the Doones far better than I
did, or do even to this moment; and therefore none will doubt when I tell
them that our good justiciaries feared to make an ado, or hold any public

inquiry about my dear father's death. They would all have had to ride home
that night, and who could say what might betide them. Least said soonest
mended, because less chance of breaking.
So we buried him quietly—all except my mother, indeed, for she could
not keep silence—in the sloping little churchyard of Oare, as meek a place
as need be, with the Lynn brook down below it. There is not much of
company there for anybody's tombstone, because the parish spreads so far
in woods and moors without dwelling-house. If we bury one man in three
years, or even a woman or child, we talk about it for three months, and say
it must be our turn next, and scarcely grow accustomed to it until another
goes.
Annie was not allowed to come, because she cried so terribly; but she
ran to the window, and saw it all, mooing there like a little calf, so
frightened and so left alone. As for Eliza, she came with me, one on each
side of mother, and not a tear was in her eyes, but sudden starts of wonder,
and a new thing to be looked at unwillingly, yet curiously. Poor little thing!
she was very clever, the only one of our family—thank God for the same—
but none the more for that guessed she what it is to lose a father.

CHAPTER VI
NECESSARY PRACTICE

About the rest of all that winter I remember
very little, being only a young boy then, and
missing my father most out of doors, as when it
came to the bird-catching, or the tracking of hares in
the snow, or the training of a sheep-dog. Oftentimes
I looked at his gun, an ancient piece found in the
sea, a little below Glenthorne, and of which he was
mighty proud, although it was only a match-lock;
and I thought of the times I had held the fuse, while
he got his aim at a rabbit, and once even at a red
deer rubbing among the hazels. But nothing came of
my looking at it, so far as I remember, save foolish tears of my own
perhaps, till John Fry took it down one day from the hooks where father's
hand had laid it; and it hurt me to see how John handled it, as if he had no
memory.
“Bad job for he as her had not got thiccy the naight as her coom acrass
them Doones. Rackon Varmer Jan 'ood a-zhown them the wai to kingdom
come, 'stead of gooin' herzel zo aisy. And a maight have been gooin' to
market now, 'stead of laying banked up over yanner. Maister Jan, thee can
zee the grave if thee look alang this here goon-barryel. Buy now, whutt be
blubberin' at? Wish I had never told thee.”
“John Fry, I am not blubbering; you make a great mistake, John. You
are thinking of little Annie. I cough sometimes in the winter-weather, and
father gives me lickerish—I mean—I mean—he used to. Now let me have
the gun, John.”
“Thee have the goon, Jan! Thee isn't fit to putt un to thy zhoulder.
What a weight her be, for sure!”
“Me not hold it, John! That shows how much you know about it. Get
out of the way, John; you are opposite the mouth of it, and likely it is

loaded.”
John Fry jumped in a livelier manner than when he was doing day-
work; and I rested the mouth on a cross rack-piece, and felt a warm sort of
surety that I could hit the door over opposite, or, at least, the cobwall
alongside of it, and do no harm in the orchard. But John would not give me
link or fuse, and, on the whole, I was glad of it, though carrying on as boys
do, because I had heard my father say that the Spanish gun kicked like a
horse, and because the load in it came from his hand, and I did not like to
undo it. But I never found it kick very hard, and firmly set to the shoulder,
unless it was badly loaded. In truth, the thickness of the metal was enough
almost to astonish one; and what our people said about it may have been
true enough, although most of them are such liars—at least, I mean, they
make mistakes, as all mankind must do. Perchance it was no mistake at all
to say that this ancient gun had belonged to a noble Spaniard, the captain of
a fine large ship in the “Invincible Armada,” which we of England managed
to conquer, with God and the weather helping us, a hundred years ago or
more—I can't say to a month or so.
After a little while, when John had fired away at a rat the charge I held
so sacred, it came to me as a natural thing to practise shooting with that
great gun, instead of John Fry's blunderbuss, which looked like a bell with a
stalk to it. Perhaps for a boy there is nothing better than a good windmill to
shoot at, as I have seen them in flat countries; but we have no windmills
upon the great moorland, yet here and there a few barn-doors, where shelter
is, and a way up the hollows. And up those hollows you can shoot, with the
help of the sides to lead your aim, and there is a fair chance of hitting the
door, if you lay your cheek to the barrel, and try not to be afraid of it.

Gradually I won such skill, that I sent nearly all the lead gutter from
the north porch of our little church through our best barn-door, a thing
which has often repented me since, especially as churchwarden, and made
me pardon many bad boys; but father was not buried on that side of the
church.

But all this time, while I was roving over the hills or about the farm,
and even listening to John Fry, my mother, being so much older and feeling
trouble longer, went about inside the house, or among the maids and fowls,
not caring to talk to the best of them, except when she broke out sometimes
about the good master they had lost, all and every one of us. But the fowls
would take no notice of it, except to cluck for barley; and the maidens,
though they had liked him well, were thinking of their sweethearts as the
spring came on. Mother thought it wrong of them, selfish and ungrateful;
and yet sometimes she was proud that none had such call as herself to
grieve for him. Only Annie seemed to go softly in and out, and cry, with
nobody along of her, chiefly in the corner where the bees are and the
grindstone. But somehow she would never let anybody behold her; being
set, as you may say, to think it over by herself, and season it with weeping.
Many times I caught her, and many times she turned upon me, and then I
could not look at her, but asked how long to dinner-time.
Now in the depth of the winter month, such as we call December,
father being dead and quiet in his grave a fortnight, it happened me to be
out of powder for practice against his enemies. I had never fired a shot
without thinking, “This for father's murderer”; and John Fry said that I
made such faces it was a wonder the gun went off. But though I could
hardly hold the gun, unless with my back against a bar, it did me good to
hear it go off, and hope to have hitten his enemies.
“Oh, mother, mother,” I said that day, directly after dinner, while she
was sitting looking at me, and almost ready to say (as now she did seven
times in a week), “How like your father you are growing! Jack, come here
and kiss me”—“oh, mother, if you only knew how much I want a shilling!”
“Jack, you shall never want a shilling while I am alive to give thee
one. But what is it for, dear heart, dear heart?”
“To buy something over at Porlock, mother. Perhaps I will tell you
afterwards. If I tell not it will be for your good, and for the sake of the
children.”
“Bless the boy, one would think he was threescore years of age at least.
Give me a little kiss, you Jack, and you shall have the shilling.”
For I hated to kiss or be kissed in those days: and so all honest boys
must do, when God puts any strength in them. But now I wanted the

powder so much that I went and kissed mother very shyly, looking round
the corner first, for Betty not to see me.
But mother gave me half a dozen, and only one shilling for all of them;
and I could not find it in my heart to ask her for another, although I would
have taken it. In very quick time I ran away with the shilling in my pocket,
and got Peggy out on the Porlock road without my mother knowing it. For
mother was frightened of that road now, as if all the trees were murderers,
and would never let me go alone so much as a hundred yards on it. And, to
tell the truth, I was touched with fear for many years about it; and even
now, when I ride at dark there, a man by a peat-rick makes me shiver, until I
go and collar him. But this time I was very bold, having John Fry's
blunderbuss, and keeping a sharp look-out wherever any lurking place was.
However, I saw only sheep and small red cattle, and the common deer of
the forest, until I was nigh to Porlock town, and then rode straight to Mr.
Pooke's, at the sign of the Spit and Gridiron.
Mr. Pooke was asleep, as it happened, not having much to do that day;
and so I fastened Peggy by the handle of a warming-pan, at which she had
no better manners than to snort and blow her breath; and in I walked with a
manful style, bearing John Fry's blunderbuss. Now Timothy Pooke was a
peaceful man, glad to live without any enjoyment of mind at danger, and I
was tall and large already as most lads of a riper age. Mr. Pooke, as soon as
he opened his eyes, dropped suddenly under the counting-board, and drew a
great frying-pan over his head, as if the Doones were come to rob him, as
their custom was, mostly after the fair-time. It made me feel rather hot and
queer to be taken for a robber; and yet methinks I was proud of it.
“Gadzooks, Master Pooke,” said I, having learned fine words at
Tiverton; “do you suppose that I know not then the way to carry firearms?
An it were the old Spanish match-lock in the lieu of this good flint-engine,
which may be borne ten miles or more and never once go off, scarcely
couldst thou seem more scared. I might point at thee muzzle on—just so as
I do now—even for an hour or more, and like enough it would never shoot
thee, unless I pulled the trigger hard, with a crock upon my finger; so you
see; just so, Master Pooke, only a trifle harder.”
“God sake, John Ridd, God sake, dear boy,” cried Pooke, knowing me
by this time; “don't 'e, for good love now, don't 'e show it to me, boy, as if I

was to suck it. Put 'un down, for good, now; and thee shall have the very
best of all is in the shop.”
“Ho!” I replied with much contempt, and swinging round the gun so
that it fetched his hoop of candles down, all unkindled as they were: “Ho!
as if I had not attained to the handling of a gun yet! My hands are cold
coming over the moors, else would I go bail to point the mouth at you for
an hour, sir, and no cause for uneasiness.”
But in spite of all assurances, he showed himself desirous only to see
the last of my gun and me. I dare say “villainous saltpetre,” as the great
playwright calls it, was never so cheap before nor since. For my shilling
Master Pooke afforded me two great packages over-large to go into my
pockets, as well as a mighty chunk of lead, which I bound upon Peggy's
withers. And as if all this had not been enough, he presented me with a roll
of comfits for my sister Annie, whose gentle face and pretty manners won
the love of everybody.
There was still some daylight here and there as I rose the hill above
Porlock, wondering whether my mother would be in a fright, or would not
know it. The two great packages of powder, slung behind my back, knocked
so hard against one another that I feared they must either spill or blow up,
and hurry me over Peggy's ears from the woollen cloth I rode upon. For
father always liked a horse to have some wool upon his loins whenever he
went far from home, and had to stand about, where one pleased, hot, and
wet, and panting. And father always said that saddles were meant for men
full-grown and heavy, and losing their activity; and no boy or young man
on our farm durst ever get into a saddle, because they all knew that the
master would chuck them out pretty quickly. As for me, I had tried it once,
from a kind of curiosity; and I could not walk for two or three days, the
leather galled my knees so. But now, as Peggy bore me bravely, snorting
every now and then into a cloud of air, for the night was growing frosty,
presently the moon arose over the shoulder of a hill, and the pony and I
were half glad to see her, and half afraid of the shadows she threw, and the
images all around us. I was ready at any moment to shoot at anybody,
having great faith in my blunderbuss, but hoping not to prove it. And as I
passed the narrow place where the Doones had killed my father, such a fear
broke out upon me that I leaned upon the neck of Peggy, and shut my eyes,
and was cold all over. However, there was not a soul to be seen, until we

came home to the old farmyard, and there was my mother crying sadly, and
Betty Muxworthy scolding.
“Come along, now,” I whispered to Annie, the moment supper was
over; “and if you can hold your tongue, Annie, I will show you something.”
She lifted herself on the bench so quickly, and flushed so rich with
pleasure, that I was obliged to stare hard away, and make Betty look beyond
us. Betty thought I had something hid in the closet beyond the clock-case,
and she was the more convinced of it by reason of my denial. Not that Betty
Muxworthy, or any one else, for that matter, ever found me in a falsehood,
because I never told one, not even to my mother—or, which is still a
stronger thing, not even to my sweetheart (when I grew up to have one)—
but that Betty being wronged in the matter of marriage, a generation or two
agone, by a man who came hedging and ditching, had now no mercy,
except to believe that men from cradle to grave are liars, and women fools
to look at them.
When Betty could find no crime of mine, she knocked me out of the
way in a minute, as if I had been nobody; and then she began to coax
“Mistress Annie,” as she always called her, and draw the soft hair down her
hands, and whisper into the little ears. Meanwhile, dear mother was falling
asleep, having been troubled so much about me; and Watch, my father's pet
dog, was nodding closer and closer up into her lap.
“Now, Annie, will you come?” I said, for I wanted her to hold the ladle
for melting of the lead; “will you come at once, Annie? or must I go for
Lizzie, and let her see the whole of it?”
“Indeed, then, you won't do that,” said Annie; “Lizzie to come before
me, John; and she can't stir a pot of brewis, and scarce knows a tongue from
a ham, John, and says it makes no difference, because both are good to eat!
Oh, Betty, what do you think of that to come of all her book-learning?”
“Thank God he can't say that of me,” Betty answered shortly, for she
never cared about argument, except on her own side; “thank he, I says,
every marning a'most, never to lead me astray so. Men is desaving and so is
galanies; but the most desaving of all is books, with their heads and tails,
and the speckots in 'em, lik a peg as have taken the maisles. Some folk
purtends to laugh and cry over them. God forgive them for liars!”
It was part of Betty's obstinacy that she never would believe in reading
or the possibility of it, but stoutly maintained to the very last that people

first learned things by heart, and then pretended to make them out from
patterns done upon paper, for the sake of astonishing honest folk just as do
the conjurers. And even to see the parson and clerk was not enough to
convince her; all she said was, “It made no odds, they were all the same as
the rest of us.” And now that she had been on the farm nigh upon forty
years, and had nursed my father, and made his clothes, and all that he had to
eat, and then put him in his coffin, she was come to such authority, that it
was not worth the wages of the best man on the place to say a word in
answer to Betty, even if he would face the risk to have ten for one, or
twenty.
Annie was her love and joy. For Annie she would do anything, even so
far as to try to smile, when the little maid laughed and danced to her. And in
truth I know not how it was, but every one was taken with Annie at the very
first time of seeing her. She had such pretty ways and manners, and such a
look of kindness, and a sweet soft light in her long blue eyes full of trustful
gladness. Everybody who looked at her seemed to grow the better for it,
because she knew no evil. And then the turn she had for cooking, you never
would have expected it; and how it was her richest mirth to see that she had
pleased you. I have been out on the world a vast deal as you will own
hereafter, and yet have I never seen Annie's equal for making a weary man
comfortable.

CHAPTER VII
HARD IT IS TO CLIMB

So many a winter night went by in a hopeful
and pleasant manner, with the hissing of the bright
round bullets, cast into the water, and the spluttering
of the great red apples which Annie was roasting for
me. We always managed our evening's work in the
chimney of the back-kitchen, where there was room
to set chairs and table, in spite of the fire burning.
On the right-hand side was a mighty oven, where
Betty threatened to bake us; and on the left, long
sides of bacon, made of favoured pigs, and growing
very brown and comely. Annie knew the names of
all, and ran up through the wood-smoke, every now
and then, when a gentle memory moved her, and asked them how they were
getting on, and when they would like to be eaten. Then she came back with
foolish tears, at thinking of that necessity; and I, being soft in a different
way, would make up my mind against bacon.
But, Lord bless you! it was no good. Whenever it came to breakfast-
time, after three hours upon the moors, I regularly forgot the pigs, but paid
good heed to the rashers. For ours is a hungry county, if such there be in
England; a place, I mean, where men must eat, and are quick to discharge
the duty. The air of the moors is so shrewd and wholesome, stirring a man's
recollection of the good things which have betided him, and whetting his
hope of something still better in the future, that by the time he sits down to
a cloth, his heart and stomach are tuned too well to say “nay” to one
another.
Almost everybody knows, in our part of the world at least, how
pleasant and soft the fall of the land is round about Plover's Barrows farm.
All above it is strong dark mountain, spread with heath, and desolate, but
near our house the valleys cove, and open warmth and shelter. Here are
trees, and bright green grass, and orchards full of contentment, and a man

may scarce espy the brook, although he hears it everywhere. And indeed a
stout good piece of it comes through our farm-yard, and swells sometimes
to a rush of waves, when the clouds are on the hill-tops. But all below,
where the valley bends, and the Lynn stream comes along with it, pretty
meadows slope their breast, and the sun spreads on the water. And nearly all
of this is ours, till you come to Nicholas Snowe's land.
But about two miles below our farm, the Bagworthy water runs into
the Lynn, and makes a real river of it. Thence it hurries away, with strength
and a force of wilful waters, under the foot of a barefaced hill, and so to
rocks and woods again, where the stream is covered over, and dark, heavy
pools delay it. There are plenty of fish all down this way, and the farther
you go the larger they get, having deeper grounds to feed in; and sometimes
in the summer months, when mother could spare me off the farm, I came
down here, with Annie to help (because it was so lonely), and caught well-
nigh a basketful of little trout and minnows, with a hook and a bit of worm
on it, or a fern-web, or a blow-fly, hung from a hazel pulse-stick. For of all
the things I learned at Blundell's, only two abode with me, and one of these
was the knack of fishing, and the other the art of swimming. And indeed
they have a very rude manner of teaching children to swim there; for the big
boys take the little boys, and put them through a certain process, which they
grimly call “sheep-washing.” In the third meadow from the gate of the
school, going up the river, there is a fine pool in the Lowman, where the
Taunton brook comes in, and they call it the Taunton Pool. The water runs
down with a strong sharp stickle, and then has a sudden elbow in it, where
the small brook trickles in; and on that side the bank is steep, four or it may
be five feet high, overhanging loamily; but on the other side it is flat,
pebbly, and fit to land upon. Now the large boys take the small boys, crying
sadly for mercy, and thinking mayhap, of their mothers, with hands laid
well at the back of their necks, they bring them up to the crest of the bank
upon the eastern side, and make them strip their clothes off. Then the little
boys, falling on their naked knees, blubber upwards piteously; but the large
boys know what is good for them, and will not be entreated. So they cast
them down, one after other into the splash of the water, and watch them go
to the bottom first, and then come up and fight for it, with a blowing and a
bubbling. It is a very fair sight to watch when you know there is little
danger, because, although the pool is deep, the current is sure to wash a boy
up on the stones, where the end of the depth is. As for me, they had no need

to throw me more than once, because I jumped of my own accord, thinking
small things of the Lowman, after the violent Lynn. Nevertheless, I learnt to
swim there, as all the other boys did; for the greatest point in learning that is
to find that you must do it. I loved the water naturally, and could not long
be out of it; but even the boys who hated it most, came to swim in some
fashion or other, after they had been flung for a year or two into the Taunton
pool.
But now, although my sister Annie came to keep me company, and was
not to be parted from me by the tricks of the Lynn stream, because I put her
on my back and carried her across, whenever she could not leap it, or tuck
up her things and take the stones; yet so it happened that neither of us had
been up the Bagworthy water. We knew that it brought a good stream down,
as full of fish as of pebbles; and we thought that it must be very pretty to
make a way where no way was, nor even a bullock came down to drink. But
whether we were afraid or not, I am sure I cannot tell, because it is so long
ago; but I think that had something to do with it. For Bagworthy water ran
out of Doone valley, a mile or so from the mouth of it.
But when I was turned fourteen years old, and put into good small-
clothes, buckled at the knee, and strong blue worsted hosen, knitted by my
mother, it happened to me without choice, I may say, to explore the
Bagworthy water. And it came about in this wise.
My mother had long been ailing, and not well able to eat much; and
there is nothing that frightens us so much as for people to have no love of
their victuals. Now I chanced to remember that once at the time of the
holidays I had brought dear mother from Tiverton a jar of pickled loaches,
caught by myself in the Lowman river, and baked in the kitchen oven, with
vinegar, a few leaves of bay, and about a dozen pepper-corns. And mother
had said that in all her life she had never tasted anything fit to be compared
with them. Whether she said so good a thing out of compliment to my skill
in catching the fish and cooking them, or whether she really meant it, is
more than I can tell, though I quite believe the latter, and so would most
people who tasted them; at any rate, I now resolved to get some loaches for
her, and do them in the self-same manner, just to make her eat a bit.
There are many people, even now, who have not come to the right
knowledge what a loach is, and where he lives, and how to catch and pickle
him. And I will not tell them all about it, because if I did, very likely there

would be no loaches left ten or twenty years after the appearance of this
book. A pickled minnow is very good if you catch him in a stickle, with the
scarlet fingers upon him; but I count him no more than the ropes in beer
compared with a loach done properly.
Being resolved to catch some loaches, whatever trouble it cost me, I
set forth without a word to any one, in the forenoon of St. Valentine's day,
1675-6, I think it must have been. Annie should not come with me, because
the water was too cold; for the winter had been long, and snow lay here and
there in patches in the hollow of the banks, like a lady's gloves forgotten.
And yet the spring was breaking forth, as it always does in Devonshire,
when the turn of the days is over; and though there was little to see of it, the
air was full of feeling.
It puzzles me now, that I remember all those young impressions so,
because I took no heed of them at the time whatever; and yet they come
upon me bright, when nothing else is evident in the gray fog of experience.
I am like an old man gazing at the outside of his spectacles, and seeing, as
he rubs the dust, the image of his grandson playing at bo-peep with him.
But let me be of any age, I never could forget that day, and how bitter
cold the water was. For I doffed my shoes and hose, and put them into a bag
about my neck; and left my little coat at home, and tied my shirt-sleeves
back to my shoulders. Then I took a three-pronged fork firmly bound to a
rod with cord, and a piece of canvas kerchief, with a lump of bread inside it;
and so went into the pebbly water, trying to think how warm it was. For
more than a mile all down the Lynn stream, scarcely a stone I left unturned,
being thoroughly skilled in the tricks of the loach, and knowing how he
hides himself. For being gray-spotted, and clear to see through, and
something like a cuttle-fish, only more substantial, he will stay quite still
where a streak of weed is in the rapid water, hoping to be overlooked, not
caring even to wag his tail. Then being disturbed he flips away, like
whalebone from the finger, and hies to a shelf of stone, and lies with his
sharp head poked in under it; or sometimes he bellies him into the mud, and
only shows his back-ridge. And that is the time to spear him nicely, holding
the fork very gingerly, and allowing for the bent of it, which comes to pass,
I know not how, at the tickle of air and water.
Or if your loach should not be abroad when first you come to look for
him, but keeping snug in his little home, then you may see him come forth

amazed at the quivering of the shingles, and oar himself and look at you,
and then dart up-stream, like a little grey streak; and then you must try to
mark him in, and follow very daintily. So after that, in a sandy place, you
steal up behind his tail to him, so that he cannot set eyes on you, for his
head is up-stream always, and there you see him abiding still, clear, and
mild, and affable. Then, as he looks so innocent, you make full sure to prog
him well, in spite of the wry of the water, and the sun making elbows to
everything, and the trembling of your fingers. But when you gird at him
lovingly, and have as good as gotten him, lo! in the go-by of the river he is
gone as a shadow goes, and only a little cloud of mud curls away from the
points of the fork.
A long way down that limpid water, chill and bright as an iceberg,
went my little self that day on man's choice errand—destruction. All the
young fish seemed to know that I was one who had taken out God's
certificate, and meant to have the value of it; every one of them was aware
that we desolate more than replenish the earth. For a cow might come and
look into the water, and put her yellow lips down; a kingfisher, like a blue
arrow, might shoot through the dark alleys over the channel, or sit on a
dipping withy-bough with his beak sunk into his breast-feathers; even an
otter might float downstream likening himself to a log of wood, with his flat
head flush with the water-top, and his oily eyes peering quietly; and yet no
panic would seize other life, as it does when a sample of man comes.
Now let not any one suppose that I thought of these things when I was
young, for I knew not the way to do it. And proud enough in truth I was at
the universal fear I spread in all those lonely places, where I myself must
have been afraid, if anything had come up to me. It is all very pretty to see
the trees big with their hopes of another year, though dumb as yet on the
subject, and the waters murmuring gaiety, and the banks spread out with
comfort; but a boy takes none of this to heart; unless he be meant for a poet
(which God can never charge upon me), and he would liefer have a good
apple, or even a bad one, if he stole it.
When I had travelled two miles or so, conquered now and then with
cold, and coming out to rub my legs into a lively friction, and only fishing
here and there, because of the tumbling water; suddenly, in an open space,
where meadows spread about it, I found a good stream flowing softly into
the body of our brook. And it brought, so far as I could guess by the sweep

of it under my knee-caps, a larger power of clear water than the Lynn itself
had; only it came more quietly down, not being troubled with stairs and
steps, as the fortune of the Lynn is, but gliding smoothly and forcibly, as if
upon some set purpose.
Hereupon I drew up and thought, and reason was much inside me;
because the water was bitter cold, and my little toes were aching. So on the
bank I rubbed them well with a sprout of young sting-nettle, and having
skipped about awhile, was kindly inclined to eat a bit.
Now all the turn of all my life hung upon that moment. But as I sat
there munching a crust of Betty Muxworthy's sweet brown bread, and a bit
of cold bacon along with it, and kicking my little red heels against the dry
loam to keep them warm, I knew no more than fish under the fork what was
going on over me. It seemed a sad business to go back now and tell Annie
there were no loaches; and yet it was a frightful thing, knowing what I did
of it, to venture, where no grown man durst, up the Bagworthy water. And
please to recollect that I was only a boy in those days, fond enough of
anything new, but not like a man to meet it.
However, as I ate more and more, my spirit arose within me, and I
thought of what my father had been, and how he had told me a hundred
times never to be a coward. And then I grew warm, and my little heart was
ashamed of its pit-a-patting, and I said to myself, “now if father looks, he
shall see that I obey him.” So I put the bag round my back again, and
buckled my breeches far up from the knee, expecting deeper water, and
crossing the Lynn, went stoutly up under the branches which hang so dark
on the Bagworthy river.
I found it strongly over-woven, turned, and torn with thicket-wood, but
not so rocky as the Lynn, and more inclined to go evenly. There were bars
of chafed stakes stretched from the sides half-way across the current, and
light outriders of pithy weed, and blades of last year's water-grass trembling
in the quiet places, like a spider's threads, on the transparent stillness, with a
tint of olive moving it. And here and there the sun came in, as if his light
was sifted, making dance upon the waves, and shadowing the pebbles.
Here, although affrighted often by the deep, dark places, and feeling
that every step I took might never be taken backward, on the whole I had
very comely sport of loaches, trout, and minnows, forking some, and
tickling some, and driving others to shallow nooks, whence I could bail

them ashore. Now, if you have ever been fishing, you will not wonder that I
was led on, forgetting all about danger, and taking no heed of the time, but
shouting in a childish way whenever I caught a “whacker” (as we called a
big fish at Tiverton); and in sooth there were very fine loaches here, having
more lie and harbourage than in the rough Lynn stream, though not quite so
large as in the Lowman, where I have even taken them to the weight of half
a pound.
But in answer to all my shouts there never was any sound at all, except
of a rocky echo, or a scared bird hustling away, or the sudden dive of a
water-vole; and the place grew thicker and thicker, and the covert grew
darker above me, until I thought that the fishes might have good chance of
eating me, instead of my eating the fishes.
For now the day was falling fast behind the brown of the hill-tops, and
the trees, being void of leaf and hard, seemed giants ready to beat me. And
every moment as the sky was clearing up for a white frost, the cold of the
water got worse and worse, until I was fit to cry with it. And so, in a sorry
plight, I came to an opening in the bushes, where a great black pool lay in
front of me, whitened with snow (as I thought) at the sides, till I saw it was
only foam-froth.
Now, though I could swim with great ease and comfort, and feared no
depth of water, when I could fairly come to it, yet I had no desire to go over
head and ears into this great pool, being so cramped and weary, and cold
enough in all conscience, though wet only up to the middle, not counting
my arms and shoulders. And the look of this black pit was enough to stop
one from diving into it, even on a hot summer's day with sunshine on the
water; I mean, if the sun ever shone there. As it was, I shuddered and drew
back; not alone at the pool itself and the black air there was about it, but
also at the whirling manner, and wisping of white threads upon it in stripy
circles round and round; and the centre still as jet.
But soon I saw the reason of the stir and depth of that great pit, as well
as of the roaring sound which long had made me wonder. For skirting round
one side, with very little comfort, because the rocks were high and steep,
and the ledge at the foot so narrow, I came to a sudden sight and marvel,
such as I never dreamed of. For, lo! I stood at the foot of a long pale slide of
water, coming smoothly to me, without any break or hindrance, for a
hundred yards or more, and fenced on either side with cliff, sheer, and

straight, and shining. The water neither ran nor fell, nor leaped with any
spouting, but made one even slope of it, as if it had been combed or planed,
and looking like a plank of deal laid down a deep black staircase. However,
there was no side-rail, nor any place to walk upon, only the channel a
fathom wide, and the perpendicular walls of crag shutting out the evening.
The look of this place had a sad effect,
scaring me very greatly, and making me feel
that I would give something only to be at home
again, with Annie cooking my supper, and our
dog Watch sniffing upward. But nothing would
come of wishing; that I had long found out; and
it only made one the less inclined to work
without white feather. So I laid the case before
me in a little council; not for loss of time, but
only that I wanted rest, and to see things truly.
Then says I to myself—“John Ridd, these trees, and pools, and
lonesome rocks, and setting of the sunlight are making a gruesome coward
of thee. Shall I go back to my mother so, and be called her fearless boy?”
Nevertheless, I am free to own that it was not any fine sense of shame
which settled my decision; for indeed there was nearly as much of danger in
going back as in going on, and perhaps even more of labour, the journey
being so roundabout. But that which saved me from turning back was a
strange inquisitive desire, very unbecoming in a boy of little years; in a
word, I would risk a great deal to know what made the water come down
like that, and what there was at the top of it.
Therefore, seeing hard strife before me, I girt up my breeches anew,
with each buckle one hole tighter, for the sodden straps were stretching and
giving, and mayhap my legs were grown smaller from the coldness of it.
Then I bestowed my fish around my neck more tightly, and not stopping to
look much, for fear of fear, crawled along over the fork of rocks, where the
water had scooped the stone out, and shunning thus the ledge from whence
it rose like the mane of a white horse into the broad black pool, softly I let
my feet into the dip and rush of the torrent.
And here I had reckoned without my host, although (as I thought) so
clever; and it was much but that I went down into the great black pool, and
had never been heard of more; and this must have been the end of me,

except for my trusty loach-fork. For the green wave came down like great
bottles upon me, and my legs were gone off in a moment, and I had not time
to cry out with wonder, only to think of my mother and Annie, and knock
my head very sadly, which made it go round so that brains were no good,
even if I had any. But all in a moment, before I knew aught, except that I
must die out of the way, with a roar of water upon me, my fork, praise God
stuck fast in the rock, and I was borne up upon it. I felt nothing except that
here was another matter to begin upon; and it might be worth while, or
again it might not, to have another fight for it. But presently the dash of the
water upon my face revived me, and my mind grew used to the roar of it,
and meseemed I had been worse off than this, when first flung into the
Lowman.
Therefore I gathered my legs back slowly, as if they were fish to be
landed, stopping whenever the water flew too strongly off my shin-bones,
and coming along without sticking out to let the wave get hold of me. And
in this manner I won a footing, leaning well forward like a draught-horse,
and balancing on my strength as it were, with the ashen stake set behind
me. Then I said to my self, “John Ridd, the sooner you get yourself out by
the way you came, the better it will be for you.” But to my great dismay and
affright, I saw that no choice was left me now, except that I must climb
somehow up that hill of water, or else be washed down into the pool and
whirl around it till it drowned me. For there was no chance of fetching back
by the way I had gone down into it, and further up was a hedge of rock on
either side of the waterway, rising a hundred yards in height, and for all I
could tell five hundred, and no place to set a foot in.
Having said the Lord's Prayer (which was all I knew), and made a very
bad job of it, I grasped the good loach-stick under a knot, and steadied me
with my left hand, and so with a sigh of despair began my course up the
fearful torrent-way. To me it seemed half a mile at least of sliding water
above me, but in truth it was little more than a furlong, as I came to know
afterwards. It would have been a hard ascent even without the slippery
slime and the force of the river over it, and I had scanty hope indeed of ever
winning the summit. Nevertheless, my terror left me, now I was face to face
with it, and had to meet the worst; and I set myself to do my best with a
vigour and sort of hardness which did not then surprise me, but have done
so ever since.

The water was only six inches deep, or from that to nine at the utmost,
and all the way up I could see my feet looking white in the gloom of the
hollow, and here and there I found resting-place, to hold on by the cliff and
pant awhile. And gradually as I went on, a warmth of courage breathed in
me, to think that perhaps no other had dared to try that pass before me, and
to wonder what mother would say to it. And then came thought of my father
also, and the pain of my feet abated.
How I went carefully, step by step, keeping my arms in front of me,
and never daring to straighten my knees is more than I can tell clearly, or
even like now to think of, because it makes me dream of it. Only I must
acknowledge that the greatest danger of all was just where I saw no
jeopardy, but ran up a patch of black ooze-weed in a very boastful manner,
being now not far from the summit.
Here I fell very piteously, and was like to have broken my knee-cap,
and the torrent got hold of my other leg while I was indulging the bruised
one. And then a vile knotting of cramp disabled me, and for awhile I could
only roar, till my mouth was full of water, and all of my body was sliding.
But the fright of that brought me to again, and my elbow caught in a rock-
hole; and so I managed to start again, with the help of more humility.
Now being in the most dreadful fright, because I was so near the top,
and hope was beating within me, I laboured hard with both legs and arms,
going like a mill and grunting. At last the rush of forked water, where first it
came over the lips of the fall, drove me into the middle, and I stuck awhile
with my toe-balls on the slippery links of the pop-weed, and the world was
green and gliddery, and I durst not look behind me. Then I made up my
mind to die at last; for so my legs would ache no more, and my breath not
pain my heart so; only it did seem such a pity after fighting so long to give
in, and the light was coming upon me, and again I fought towards it; then
suddenly I felt fresh air, and fell into it headlong.

CHAPTER VIII
A BOY AND A GIRL

When I came to myself again, my hands were
full of young grass and mould, and a little girl
kneeling at my side was rubbing my forehead
tenderly with a dock-leaf and a handkerchief.
“Oh, I am so glad,” she whispered softly, as I
opened my eyes and looked at her; “now you will
try to be better, won't you?”
I had never heard so sweet a sound as came
from between her bright red lips, while there she
knelt and gazed at me; neither had I ever seen
anything so beautiful as the large dark eyes intent
upon me, full of pity and wonder. And then, my nature being slow, and
perhaps, for that matter, heavy, I wandered with my hazy eyes down the
black shower of her hair, as to my jaded gaze it seemed; and where it fell on
the turf, among it (like an early star) was the first primrose of the season.
And since that day I think of her, through all the rough storms of my life,
when I see an early primrose. Perhaps she liked my countenance, and
indeed I know she did, because she said so afterwards; although at the time
she was too young to know what made her take to me. Not that I had any
beauty, or ever pretended to have any, only a solid healthy face, which
many girls have laughed at.
Thereupon I sate upright, with my little trident still in one hand, and
was much afraid to speak to her, being conscious of my country-brogue, lest
she should cease to like me. But she clapped her hands, and made a trifling
dance around my back, and came to me on the other side, as if I were a
great plaything.
“What is your name?” she said, as if she had every right to ask me;
“and how did you come here, and what are these wet things in this great
bag?”

“You had better let them alone,” I said;
“they are loaches for my mother. But I will give
you some, if you like.”
“Dear me, how much you think of them!
Why, they are only fish. But how your feet are
bleeding! oh, I must tie them up for you. And
no shoes nor stockings! Is your mother very
poor, poor boy?”
“No,” I said, being vexed at this; “we are
rich enough to buy all this great meadow, if we chose; and here my shoes
and stockings be.”
“Why, they are quite as wet as your feet; and I cannot bear to see your
feet. Oh, please to let me manage them; I will do it very softly.”
“Oh, I don't think much of that,” I replied; “I shall put some goose-
grease to them. But how you are looking at me! I never saw any one like
you before. My name is John Ridd. What is your name?”
“Lorna Doone,” she answered, in a low voice, as if afraid of it, and
hanging her head so that I could see only her forehead and eyelashes; “if
you please, my name is Lorna Doone; and I thought you must have known
it.”
Then I stood up and touched her hand, and tried to make her look at
me; but she only turned away the more. Young and harmless as she was, her
name alone made guilt of her. Nevertheless I could not help looking at her
tenderly, and the more when her blushes turned into tears, and her tears to
long, low sobs.
“Don't cry,” I said, “whatever you do. I am sure you have never done
any harm. I will give you all my fish Lorna, and catch some more for
mother; only don't be angry with me.”
She flung her little soft arms up in the passion of her tears, and looked
at me so piteously, that what did I do but kiss her. It seemed to be a very
odd thing, when I came to think of it, because I hated kissing so, as all
honest boys must do. But she touched my heart with a sudden delight, like a
cowslip-blossom (although there were none to be seen yet), and the
sweetest flowers of spring.

She gave me no encouragement, as my mother in her place would have
done; nay, she even wiped her lips (which methought was rather rude of
her), and drew away, and smoothed her dress, as if I had used a freedom.
Then I felt my cheeks grow burning red, and I gazed at my legs and was
sorry. For although she was not at all a proud child (at any rate in her
countenance), yet I knew that she was by birth a thousand years in front of
me. They might have taken and framed me, or (which would be more to the
purpose) my sisters, until it was time for us to die, and then have trained our
children after us, for many generations; yet never could we have gotten that
look upon our faces which Lorna Doone had naturally, as if she had been
born to it.
Here was I, a yeoman's boy, a yeoman every inch of me, even where I
was naked; and there was she, a lady born, and thoroughly aware of it, and
dressed by people of rank and taste, who took pride in her beauty and set it
to advantage. For though her hair was fallen down by reason of her
wildness, and some of her frock was touched with wet where she had
tended me so, behold her dress was pretty enough for the queen of all the
angels. The colours were bright and rich indeed, and the substance very
sumptuous, yet simple and free from tinsel stuff, and matching most
harmoniously. All from her waist to her neck was white, plaited in close like
a curtain, and the dark soft weeping of her hair, and the shadowy light of
her eyes (like a wood rayed through with sunset), made it seem yet whiter,
as if it were done on purpose. As for the rest, she knew what it was a great
deal better than I did, for I never could look far away from her eyes when
they were opened upon me.
Now, seeing how I heeded her, and feeling that I had kissed her,
although she was such a little girl, eight years old or thereabouts, she turned
to the stream in a bashful manner, and began to watch the water, and rubbed
one leg against the other.
I, for my part, being vexed at her behaviour to me, took up all my
things to go, and made a fuss about it; to let her know I was going. But she
did not call me back at all, as I had made sure she would do; moreover, I
knew that to try the descent was almost certain death to me, and it looked as
dark as pitch; and so at the mouth I turned round again, and came back to
her, and said, “Lorna.”

“Oh, I thought you were gone,” she answered; “why did you ever
come here? Do you know what they would do to us, if they found you here
with me?”
“Beat us, I dare say, very hard; or me, at least. They could never beat
you.”
“No. They would kill us both outright, and bury us here by the water;
and the water often tells me that I must come to that.”
“But what should they kill me for?”
“Because you have found the way up here, and they never could
believe it. Now, please to go; oh, please to go. They will kill us both in a
moment. Yes, I like you very much”—for I was teasing her to say it—“very
much indeed, and I will call you John Ridd, if you like; only please to go,
John. And when your feet are well, you know, you can come and tell me
how they are.”
“But I tell you, Lorna, I like you very much indeed—nearly as much as
Annie, and a great deal more than Lizzie. And I never saw any one like you,
and I must come back again to-morrow, and so must you, to see me; and I
will bring you such lots of things—there are apples still, and a thrush I
caught with only one leg broken, and our dog has just had puppies—”
“Oh, dear, they won't let me have a dog. There is not a dog in the
valley. They say they are such noisy things—”
“Only put your hand in mine—what little things they are, Lorna! And I
will bring you the loveliest dog; I will show you just how long he is.”
“Hush!” A shout came down the valley, and all my heart was
trembling, like water after sunset, and Lorna's face was altered from
pleasant play to terror. She shrank to me, and looked up at me, with such a
power of weakness, that I at once made up my mind to save her or to die
with her. A tingle went through all my bones, and I only longed for my
carbine. The little girl took courage from me, and put her cheek quite close
to mine.
“Come with me down the waterfall. I can carry you easily; and mother
will take care of you.”
“No, no,” she cried, as I took her up: “I will tell you what to do. They
are only looking for me. You see that hole, that hole there?”

She pointed to a little niche in the rock which verged the meadow,
about fifty yards away from us. In the fading of the twilight I could just
descry it.
“Yes, I see it; but they will see me crossing the grass to get there.”
“Look! look!” She could hardly speak. “There is a way out from the
top of it; they would kill me if I told it. Oh, here they come, I can see
them.”
The little maid turned as white as the snow which hung on the rocks
above her, and she looked at the water and then at me, and she cried, “Oh
dear! oh dear!” And then she began to sob aloud, being so young and
unready. But I drew her behind the withy-bushes, and close down to the
water, where it was quiet and shelving deep, ere it came to the lip of the
chasm. Here they could not see either of us from the upper valley, and
might have sought a long time for us, even when they came quite near, if
the trees had been clad with their summer clothes. Luckily I had picked up
my fish and taken my three-pronged fork away.
Crouching in that hollow nest, as children get together in ever so little
compass, I saw a dozen fierce men come down, on the other side of the
water, not bearing any fire-arms, but looking lax and jovial, as if they were
come from riding and a dinner taken hungrily. “Queen, queen!” they were
shouting, here and there, and now and then: “where the pest is our little
queen gone?”
“They always call me 'queen,' and I am to be queen by-and-by,” Lorna
whispered to me, with her soft cheek on my rough one, and her little heart
beating against me: “oh, they are crossing by the timber there, and then they
are sure to see us.”
“Stop,” said I; “now I see what to do. I must get into the water, and
you must go to sleep.”
“To be sure, yes, away in the meadow there. But how bitter cold it will
be for you!”
She saw in a moment the way to do it, sooner than I could tell her; and
there was no time to lose.
“Now mind you never come again,” she whispered over her shoulder,
as she crept away with a childish twist hiding her white front from me;
“only I shall come sometimes—oh, here they are, Madonna!”

Daring scarce to peep, I crept into the water, and lay down bodily in it,
with my head between two blocks of stone, and some flood-drift combing
over me. The dusk was deepening between the hills, and a white mist lay on
the river; but I, being in the channel of it, could see every ripple, and twig,
and rush, and glazing of twilight above it, as bright as in a picture; so that to
my ignorance there seemed no chance at all but what the men must find me.
For all this time they were shouting and swearing, and keeping such a
hullabaloo, that the rocks all round the valley rang, and my heart quaked, so
(what with this and the cold) that the water began to gurgle round me, and
to lap upon the pebbles.
Neither in truth did I try to stop it, being now so desperate, between
the fear and the wretchedness; till I caught a glimpse of the little maid,
whose beauty and whose kindliness had made me yearn to be with her. And
then I knew that for her sake I was bound to be brave and hide myself. She
was lying beneath a rock, thirty or forty yards from me, feigning to be fast
asleep, with her dress spread beautifully, and her hair drawn over her.
Presently one of the great rough men came round a corner upon her;
and there he stopped and gazed awhile at her fairness and her innocence.
Then he caught her up in his arms, and kissed her so that I heard him; and if
I had only brought my gun, I would have tried to shoot him.
“Here our queen is! Here's the queen, here's the captain's daughter!” he
shouted to his comrades; “fast asleep, by God, and hearty! Now I have first
claim to her; and no one else shall touch the child. Back to the bottle, all of
you!”
He set her dainty little form upon his great square shoulder, and her
narrow feet in one broad hand; and so in triumph marched away, with the
purple velvet of her skirt ruffling in his long black beard, and the silken
length of her hair fetched out, like a cloud by the wind behind her. This way
of her going vexed me so, that I leaped upright in the water, and must have
been spied by some of them, but for their haste to the wine-bottle. Of their
little queen they took small notice, being in this urgency; although they had
thought to find her drowned; but trooped away after one another with
kindly challenge to gambling, so far as I could make them out; and I kept
sharp watch, I assure you.
Going up that darkened glen, little Lorna, riding still the largest and
most fierce of them, turned and put up a hand to me, and I put up a hand to

her, in the thick of the mist and the willows.
She was gone, my little dear (though tall of her age and healthy); and
when I got over my thriftless fright, I longed to have more to say to her. Her
voice to me was so different from all I had ever heard before, as might be a
sweet silver bell intoned to the small chords of a harp. But I had no time to
think about this, if I hoped to have any supper.
I crept into a bush for warmth, and rubbed my shivering legs on bark,
and longed for mother's fagot. Then as daylight sank below the forget-me-
not of stars, with a sorrow to be quit, I knew that now must be my time to
get away, if there were any.
Therefore, wringing my sodden breaches, I managed to crawl from the
bank to the niche in the cliff which Lorna had shown me.
Through the dusk I had trouble to see the mouth, at even the five land-
yards of distance; nevertheless, I entered well, and held on by some dead
fern-stems, and did hope that no one would shoot me.
But while I was hugging myself like this, with a boyish manner of
reasoning, my joy was like to have ended in sad grief both to myself and
my mother, and haply to all honest folk who shall love to read this history.
For hearing a noise in front of me, and like a coward not knowing where,
but afraid to turn round or think of it, I felt myself going down some deep
passage into a pit of darkness. It was no good to catch the sides, the whole
thing seemed to go with me. Then, without knowing how, I was leaning
over a night of water.
This water was of black radiance, as are certain diamonds, spanned
across with vaults of rock, and carrying no image, neither showing marge
nor end, but centred (at it might be) with a bottomless indrawal.
With that chill and dread upon me, and the sheer rock all around, and
the faint light heaving wavily on the silence of this gulf, I must have lost
my wits and gone to the bottom, if there were any.
But suddenly a robin sang (as they will do after dark, towards spring)
in the brown fern and ivy behind me. I took it for our little Annie's voice
(for she could call any robin), and gathering quick warm comfort, sprang up
the steep way towards the starlight. Climbing back, as the stones glid down,
I heard the cold greedy wave go japping, like a blind black dog, into the
distance of arches and hollow depths of darkness.

CHAPTER IX
THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME

I can assure you, and tell no lie (as John Fry
always used to say, when telling his very largest),
that I scrambled back to the mouth of that pit as if
the evil one had been after me. And sorely I
repented now of all my boyish folly, or madness it
might well be termed, in venturing, with none to
help, and nothing to compel me, into that accursed
valley. Once let me get out, thinks I, and if ever I get
in again, without being cast in by neck and by crop,
I will give our new-born donkey leave to set up for
my schoolmaster.
How I kept that resolution we shall see
hereafter. It is enough for me now to tell how I escaped from the den that
night. First I sat down in the little opening which Lorna had pointed out to
me, and wondered whether she had meant, as bitterly occurred to me, that I
should run down into the pit, and be drowned, and give no more trouble.
But in less than half a minute I was ashamed of that idea, and remembered
how she was vexed to think that even a loach should lose his life. And then
I said to myself, “Now surely she would value me more than a thousand
loaches; and what she said must be quite true about the way out of this
horrible place.”
Therefore I began to search with the utmost care and diligence,
although my teeth were chattering, and all my bones beginning to ache with
the chilliness and the wetness. Before very long the moon appeared, over
the edge of the mountain, and among the trees at the top of it; and then I
espied rough steps, and rocky, made as if with a sledge-hammer, narrow,
steep, and far asunder, scooped here and there in the side of the entrance,
and then round a bulge of the cliff, like the marks upon a great brown loaf,
where a hungry child has picked at it. And higher up, where the light of the

moon shone broader upon the precipice, there seemed to be a rude broken
track, like the shadow of a crooked stick thrown upon a house-wall.
Herein was small encouragement; and at first I was minded to lie down
and die; but it seemed to come amiss to me. God has His time for all of us;
but He seems to advertise us when He does not mean to do it. Moreover, I
saw a movement of lights at the head of the valley, as if lanthorns were
coming after me, and the nimbleness given thereon to my heels was in front
of all meditation.
Straightway I set foot in the lowest stirrup (as I might almost call it),
and clung to the rock with my nails, and worked to make a jump into the
second stirrup. And I compassed that too, with the aid of my stick;
although, to tell you the truth, I was not at that time of life so agile as boys
of smaller frame are, for my size was growing beyond my years, and the
muscles not keeping time with it, and the joints of my bones not closely
hinged, with staring at one another. But the third step-hole was the hardest
of all, and the rock swelled out on me over my breast, and there seemed to
be no attempting it, until I espied a good stout rope hanging in a groove of
shadow, and just managed to reach the end of it.
How I clomb up, and across the clearing, and found my way home
through the Bagworthy forest, is more than I can remember now, for I took
all the rest of it then as a dream, by reason of perfect weariness. And indeed
it was quite beyond my hopes to tell so much as I have told, for at first
beginning to set it down, it was all like a mist before me. Nevertheless,
some parts grew clearer, as one by one I remembered them, having taken a
little soft cordial, because the memory frightens me.
For the toil of the water, and danger of labouring up the long cascade
or rapids, and then the surprise of the fair young maid, and terror of the
murderers, and desperation of getting away—all these are much to me even
now, when I am a stout churchwarden, and sit by the side of my fire, after
going through many far worse adventures, which I will tell, God willing.
Only the labour of writing is such (especially so as to construe, and
challenge a reader on parts of speech, and hope to be even with him); that
by this pipe which I hold in my hand I ever expect to be beaten, as in the
days when old Doctor Twiggs, if I made a bad stroke in my exercise,
shouted aloud with a sour joy, “John Ridd, sirrah, down with your small-
clothes!”

Let that be as it may, I deserved a good beating that night, after making
such a fool of myself, and grinding good fustian to pieces. But when I got
home, all the supper was in, and the men sitting at the white table, and
mother and Annie and Lizzie near by, all eager, and offering to begin
(except, indeed, my mother, who was looking out at the doorway), and by
the fire was Betty Muxworthy, scolding, and cooking, and tasting her work,
all in a breath, as a man would say. I looked through the door from the dark
by the wood-stack, and was half of a mind to stay out like a dog, for fear of
the rating and reckoning; but the way my dear mother was looking about
and the browning of the sausages got the better of me.

But nobody could get out of me where I had been all the day and
evening; although they worried me never so much, and longed to shake me
to pieces, especially Betty Muxworthy, who never could learn to let well
alone. Not that they made me tell any lies, although it would have served
them right almost for intruding on other people's business; but that I just
held my tongue, and ate my supper rarely, and let them try their taunts and
jibes, and drove them almost wild after supper, by smiling exceeding
knowingly. And indeed I could have told them things, as I hinted once or
twice; and then poor Betty and our little Lizzie were so mad with eagerness,
that between them I went into the fire, being thoroughly overcome with
laughter and my own importance.

Now what the working of my mind was (if, indeed it worked at all, and
did not rather follow suit of body) it is not in my power to say; only that the
result of my adventure in the Doone Glen was to make me dream a good
deal of nights, which I had never done much before, and to drive me, with
tenfold zeal and purpose, to the practice of bullet-shooting. Not that I ever
expected to shoot the Doone family, one by one, or even desired to do so,
for my nature is not revengeful; but that it seemed to be somehow my
business to understand the gun, as a thing I must be at home with.
I could hit the barn-door now capitally well with the Spanish match-
lock, and even with John Fry's blunderbuss, at ten good land-yards distance,
without any rest for my fusil. And what was very wrong of me, though I did
not see it then, I kept John Fry there, to praise my shots, from dinner-time
often until the grey dusk, while he all the time should have been at work
spring-ploughing upon the farm. And for that matter so should I have been,
or at any rate driving the horses; but John was by no means loath to be
there, instead of holding the plough-tail. And indeed, one of our old sayings
is,—

“For pleasure's sake I would liefer wet,
Than ha' ten lumps of gold for each one of my sweat.”

And again, which is not a bad proverb, though unthrifty and unlike a
Scotsman's,—

“God makes the wheat grow greener,
While farmer be at his dinner.”

And no Devonshire man, or Somerset either (and I belong to both of
them), ever thinks of working harder than God likes to see him.
Nevertheless, I worked hard at the gun, and by the time that I had sent
all the church-roof gutters, so far as I honestly could cut them, through the
red pine-door, I began to long for a better tool that would make less noise
and throw straighter. But the sheep-shearing came and the hay-season next,
and then the harvest of small corn, and the digging of the root called
“batata” (a new but good thing in our neighbourhood, which our folk have
made into “taties”), and then the sweating of the apples, and the turning of

the cider-press, and the stacking of the firewood, and netting of the
woodcocks, and the springles to be minded in the garden and by the
hedgerows, where blackbirds hop to the molehills in the white October
mornings, and grey birds come to look for snails at the time when the sun is
rising.
It is wonderful how time runs away, when all these things and a great
many others come in to load him down the hill and prevent him from
stopping to look about. And I for my part can never conceive how people
who live in towns and cities, where neither lambs nor birds are (except in
some shop windows), nor growing corn, nor meadow-grass, nor even so
much as a stick to cut or a stile to climb and sit down upon—how these
poor folk get through their lives without being utterly weary of them, and
dying from pure indolence, is a thing God only knows, if His mercy allows
Him to think of it.
How the year went by I know not, only that I was abroad all day,
shooting, or fishing, or minding the farm, or riding after some stray beast,
or away by the seaside below Glenthorne, wondering at the great waters,
and resolving to go for a sailor. For in those days I had a firm belief, as
many other strong boys have, of being born for a seaman. And indeed I had
been in a boat nearly twice; but the second time mother found it out, and
came and drew me back again; and after that she cried so badly, that I was
forced to give my word to her to go no more without telling her.
But Betty Muxworthy spoke her mind quite in a different way about it,
the while she was wringing my hosen, and clattering to the drying-horse.
“Zailor, ees fai! ay and zarve un raight. Her can't kape out o' the watter
here, whur a' must goo vor to vaind un, zame as a gurt to-ad squalloping,
and mux up till I be wore out, I be, wi' the very saight of 's braiches. How
wil un ever baide aboard zhip, wi' the watter zinging out under un, and
comin' up splash when the wind blow. Latt un goo, missus, latt un goo, zay
I for wan, and old Davy wash his clouts for un.”
And this discourse of Betty's tended more than my mother's prayers, I
fear, to keep me from going. For I hated Betty in those days, as children
always hate a cross servant, and often get fond of a false one. But Betty,
like many active women, was false by her crossness only; thinking it just
for the moment perhaps, and rushing away with a bucket; ready to stick to
it, like a clenched nail, if beaten the wrong way with argument; but melting

over it, if you left her, as stinging soap, left along in a basin, spreads all
abroad without bubbling.
But all this is beyond the children, and beyond me too for that matter,
even now in ripe experience; for I never did know what women mean, and
never shall except when they tell me, if that be in their power. Now let that
question pass. For although I am now in a place of some authority, I have
observed that no one ever listens to me, when I attempt to lay down the law;
but all are waiting with open ears until I do enforce it. And so methinks he
who reads a history cares not much for the wisdom or folly of the writer
(knowing well that the former is far less than his own, and the latter vastly
greater), but hurries to know what the people did, and how they got on
about it. And this I can tell, if any one can, having been myself in the thick
of it.
The fright I had taken that night in Glen Doone satisfied me for a long
time thereafter; and I took good care not to venture even in the fields and
woods of the outer farm, without John Fry for company. John was greatly
surprised and pleased at the value I now set upon him; until, what betwixt
the desire to vaunt and the longing to talk things over, I gradually laid bare
to him nearly all that had befallen me; except, indeed, about Lorna, whom a
sort of shame kept me from mentioning. Not that I did not think of her, and
wish very often to see her again; but of course I was only a boy as yet, and
therefore inclined to despise young girls, as being unable to do anything,
and only meant to listen to orders. And when I got along with the other
boys, that was how we always spoke of them, if we deigned to speak at all,
as beings of a lower order, only good enough to run errands for us, and to
nurse boy-babies.
And yet my sister Annie was in truth a great deal more to me than all
the boys of the parish, and of Brendon, and Countisbury, put together;
although at the time I never dreamed it, and would have laughed if told so.
Annie was of a pleasing face, and very gentle manner, almost like a lady
some people said; but without any airs whatever, only trying to give
satisfaction. And if she failed, she would go and weep, without letting any
one know it, believing the fault to be all her own, when mostly it was of
others. But if she succeeded in pleasing you, it was beautiful to see her
smile, and stroke her soft chin in a way of her own, which she always used
when taking note how to do the right thing again for you. And then her

cheeks had a bright clear pink, and her eyes were as blue as the sky in
spring, and she stood as upright as a young apple-tree, and no one could
help but smile at her, and pat her brown curls approvingly; whereupon she
always curtseyed. For she never tried to look away when honest people
gazed at her; and even in the court-yard she would come and help to take
your saddle, and tell (without your asking her) what there was for dinner.
And afterwards she grew up to be a very comely maiden, tall, and with
a well-built neck, and very fair white shoulders, under a bright cloud of
curling hair. Alas! poor Annie, like most of the gentle maidens—but tush, I
am not come to that yet; and for the present she seemed to me little to look
at, after the beauty of Lorna Doone.

CHAPTER X
A BRAVE RESCUE AND A ROUGH RIDE

It happened upon a November evening (when I
was about fifteen years old, and out-growing my
strength very rapidly, my sister Annie being turned
thirteen, and a deal of rain having fallen, and all the
troughs in the yard being flooded, and the bark from
the wood-ricks washed down the gutters, and even
our water-shoot going brown) that the ducks in the
court made a terrible quacking, instead of marching
off to their pen, one behind another. Thereupon
Annie and I ran out to see what might be the sense
of it. There were thirteen ducks, and ten lily-white
(as the fashion then of ducks was), not I mean twenty-three in all, but ten
white and three brown-striped ones; and without being nice about their
colour, they all quacked very movingly. They pushed their gold-coloured
bills here and there (yet dirty, as gold is apt to be), and they jumped on the
triangles of their feet, and sounded out of their nostrils; and some of the
over-excited ones ran along low on the ground, quacking grievously with
their bills snapping and bending, and the roof of their mouths exhibited.
Annie began to cry “Dilly, dilly, einy, einy, ducksey,” according to the
burden of a tune they seem to have accepted as the national duck's anthem;
but instead of being soothed by it, they only quacked three times as hard,
and ran round till we were giddy. And then they shook their tails together,
and looked grave, and went round and round again. Now I am uncommonly
fond of ducks, both roasted and roasting and roystering; and it is a fine sight
to behold them walk, poddling one after other, with their toes out, like
soldiers drilling, and their little eyes cocked all ways at once, and the way
that they dib with their bills, and dabble, and throw up their heads and enjoy
something, and then tell the others about it. Therefore I knew at once, by
the way they were carrying on, that there must be something or other gone
wholly amiss in the duck-world. Sister Annie perceived it too, but with a

greater quickness; for she counted them like a good duck-wife, and could
only tell thirteen of them, when she knew there ought to be fourteen.
And so we began to search about, and the ducks ran to lead us aright,
having come that far to fetch us; and when we got down to the foot of the
court-yard where the two great ash-trees stand by the side of the little water,
we found good reason for the urgency and melancholy of the duck-birds.
Lo! the old white drake, the father of all, a bird of high manners and
chivalry, always the last to help himself from the pan of barley-meal, and
the first to show fight to a dog or cock intruding upon his family, this fine
fellow, and pillar of the state, was now in a sad predicament, yet quacking
very stoutly. For the brook, wherewith he had been familiar from his callow
childhood, and wherein he was wont to quest for water-newts, and tadpoles,
and caddis-worms, and other game, this brook, which afforded him very
often scanty space to dabble in, and sometimes starved the cresses, was now
coming down in a great brown flood, as if the banks never belonged to it.
The foaming of it, and the noise, and the cresting of the corners, and the up
and down, like a wave of the sea, were enough to frighten any duck, though
bred upon stormy waters, which our ducks never had been.
There is always a hurdle six feet long and four and a half in depth,
swung by a chain at either end from an oak laid across the channel. And the
use of this hurdle is to keep our kine at milking time from straying away
there drinking (for in truth they are very dainty) and to fence strange cattle,
or Farmer Snowe's horses, from coming along the bed of the brook
unknown, to steal our substance. But now this hurdle, which hung in the
summer a foot above the trickle, would have been dipped more than two
feet deep but for the power against it. For the torrent came down so
vehemently that the chains at full stretch were creaking, and the hurdle
buffeted almost flat, and thatched (so to say) with the drift-stuff, was going
see-saw, with a sulky splash on the dirty red comb of the waters. But
saddest to see was between two bars, where a fog was of rushes, and flood-
wood, and wild-celery haulm, and dead crowsfoot, who but our venerable
mallard jammed in by the joint of his shoulder, speaking aloud as he rose
and fell, with his top-knot full of water, unable to comprehend it, with his
tail washed far away from him, but often compelled to be silent, being
ducked very harshly against his will by the choking fall-to of the hurdle.

For a moment I could not help laughing, because, being borne up high
and dry by a tumult of the torrent, he gave me a look from his one little eye
(having lost one in fight with the turkey-cock), a gaze of appealing sorrow,
and then a loud quack to second it. But the quack came out of time, I
suppose, for his throat got filled with water, as the hurdle carried him back
again. And then there was scarcely the screw of his tail to be seen until he
swung up again, and left small doubt by the way he sputtered, and failed to
quack, and hung down his poor crest, but what he must drown in another
minute, and frogs triumph over his body.
Annie was crying, and wringing her hands, and I was about to rush
into the water, although I liked not the look of it, but hoped to hold on by
the hurdle, when a man on horseback came suddenly round the corner of
the great ash-hedge on the other side of the stream, and his horse's feet were
in the water.
“Ho, there,” he cried; “get thee back, boy. The flood will carry thee
down like a straw. I will do it for thee, and no trouble.”

With that he leaned forward, and spoke to his mare—she was just of
the tint of a strawberry, a young thing, very beautiful—and she arched up
her neck, as misliking the job; yet, trusting him, would attempt it. She
entered the flood, with her dainty fore-legs sloped further and further in
front of her, and her delicate ears pricked forward, and the size of her great
eyes increasing, but he kept her straight in the turbid rush, by the pressure
of his knee on her. Then she looked back, and wondered at him, as the force

of the torrent grew stronger, but he bade her go on; and on she went, and it
foamed up over her shoulders; and she tossed up her lip and scorned it, for
now her courage was waking. Then as the rush of it swept her away, and
she struck with her forefeet down the stream, he leaned from his saddle in a
manner which I never could have thought possible, and caught up old Tom
with his left hand, and set him between his holsters, and smiled at his faint
quack of gratitude. In a moment all these were carried downstream, and the
rider lay flat on his horse, and tossed the hurdle clear from him, and made
for the bend of smooth water.
They landed some thirty or forty yards lower, in the midst of our
kitchen-garden, where the winter-cabbage was; but though Annie and I
crept in through the hedge, and were full of our thanks and admiring him,
he would answer us never a word, until he had spoken in full to the mare, as
if explaining the whole to her.
“Sweetheart, I know thou couldst have leaped it,” he said, as he patted
her cheek, being on the ground by this time, and she was nudging up to
him, with the water pattering off her; “but I had good reason, Winnie dear,
for making thee go through it.”
She answered him kindly with her soft eyes, and smiled at him very
lovingly, and they understood one another. Then he took from his waistcoat
two peppercorns, and made the old drake swallow them, and tried him
softly upon his legs, where the leading gap in the hedge was. Old Tom stood
up quite bravely, and clapped his wings, and shook off the wet from his tail-
feathers; and then away into the court-yard, and his family gathered around
him, and they all made a noise in their throats, and stood up, and put their
bills together, to thank God for this great deliverance.
Having taken all this trouble, and watched the end of that adventure,
the gentleman turned round to us with a pleasant smile on his face, as if he
were lightly amused with himself; and we came up and looked at him. He
was rather short, about John Fry's height, or may be a little taller, but very
strongly built and springy, as his gait at every step showed plainly, although
his legs were bowed with much riding, and he looked as if he lived on
horseback. To a boy like me he seemed very old, being over twenty, and
well-found in beard; but he was not more than four-and-twenty, fresh and
ruddy looking, with a short nose and keen blue eyes, and a merry waggish
jerk about him, as if the world were not in earnest. Yet he had a sharp, stern

way, like the crack of a pistol, if anything misliked him; and we knew (for
children see such things) that it was safer to tickle than tackle him.
“Well, young uns, what be gaping at?” He gave
pretty Annie a chuck on the chin, and took me all in
without winking.
“Your mare,” said I, standing stoutly up, being a
tall boy now; “I never saw such a beauty, sir. Will
you let me have a ride of her?”
“Think thou couldst ride her, lad? She will have
no burden but mine. Thou couldst never ride her.
Tut! I would be loath to kill thee.”
“Ride her!” I cried with the bravest scorn, for she looked so kind and
gentle; “there never was horse upon Exmoor foaled, but I could tackle in
half an hour. Only I never ride upon saddle. Take them leathers off of her.”
He looked at me with a dry little whistle, and thrust his hands into his
breeches-pockets, and so grinned that I could not stand it. And Annie laid
hold of me in such a way that I was almost mad with her. And he laughed,
and approved her for doing so. And the worst of all was—he said nothing.
“Get away, Annie, will you? Do you think I'm a fool, good sir! Only
trust me with her, and I will not override her.”
“For that I will go bail, my son. She is liker to override thee. But the
ground is soft to fall upon, after all this rain. Now come out into the yard,
young man, for the sake of your mother's cabbages. And the mellow straw-
bed will be softer for thee, since pride must have its fall. I am thy mother's
cousin, boy, and am going up to house. Tom Faggus is my name, as
everybody knows; and this is my young mare, Winnie.”
What a fool I must have been not to know it at once! Tom Faggus, the
great highwayman, and his young blood-mare, the strawberry! Already her
fame was noised abroad, nearly as much as her master's; and my longing to
ride her grew tenfold, but fear came at the back of it. Not that I had the
smallest fear of what the mare could do to me, by fair play and horse-
trickery, but that the glory of sitting upon her seemed to be too great for me;
especially as there were rumours abroad that she was not a mare after all,
but a witch. However, she looked like a filly all over, and wonderfully
beautiful, with her supple stride, and soft slope of shoulder, and glossy coat

beaded with water, and prominent eyes full of docile fire. Whether this
came from her Eastern blood of the Arabs newly imported, and whether the
cream-colour, mixed with our bay, led to that bright strawberry tint, is
certainly more than I can decide, being chiefly acquaint with farm-horses.
And these come of any colour and form; you never can count what they will
be, and are lucky to get four legs to them.
Mr. Faggus gave his mare a wink, and she
walked demurely after him, a bright young thing,
flowing over with life, yet dropping her soul to a
higher one, and led by love to anything; as the
manner is of females, when they know what is the
best for them. Then Winnie trod lightly upon the
straw, because it had soft muck under it, and her
delicate feet came back again.
“Up for it still, boy, be ye?” Tom Faggus
stopped, and the mare stopped there; and they
looked at me provokingly.
“Is she able to leap, sir? There is good take-off
on this side of the brook.”
Mr. Faggus laughed very quietly, turning
round to Winnie so that she might enter into it. And
she, for her part, seemed to know exactly where the
fun lay.
“Good tumble-off, you mean, my boy. Well,
there can be small harm to thee. I am akin to thy
family, and know the substance of their skulls.”
“Let me get up,” said I, waxing wroth, for reasons I cannot tell you,
because they are too manifold; “take off your saddle-bag things. I will try
not to squeeze her ribs in, unless she plays nonsense with me.”
Then Mr. Faggus was up on his mettle, at this proud speech of mine;
and John Fry was running up all the while, and Bill Dadds, and half a
dozen. Tom Faggus gave one glance around, and then dropped all regard for
me. The high repute of his mare was at stake, and what was my life
compared to it? Through my defiance, and stupid ways, here was I in a
duello, and my legs not come to their strength yet, and my arms as limp as a
herring.

Something of this occurred to him even in his wrath with me, for he
spoke very softly to the filly, who now could scarce subdue herself; but she
drew in her nostrils, and breathed to his breath and did all she could to
answer him.
“Not too hard, my dear,” he said: “let him gently down on the mixen.
That will be quite enough.” Then he turned the saddle off, and I was up in a
moment. She began at first so easily, and pricked her ears so lovingly, and
minced about as if pleased to find so light a weight upon her, that I thought
she knew I could ride a little, and feared to show any capers. “Gee wug,
Polly!” cried I, for all the men were now looking on, being then at the
leaving-off time: “Gee wug, Polly, and show what thou be'est made of.”
With that I plugged my heels into her, and Billy Dadds flung his hat up.
Nevertheless, she outraged not, though her eyes were frightening
Annie, and John Fry took a pick to keep him safe; but she curbed to and fro
with her strong forearms rising like springs ingathered, waiting and
quivering grievously, and beginning to sweat about it. Then her master gave
a shrill clear whistle, when her ears were bent towards him, and I felt her
form beneath me gathering up like whalebone, and her hind-legs coming
under her, and I knew that I was in for it.
First she reared upright in the air, and struck me full on the nose with
her comb, till I bled worse than Robin Snell made me; and then down with
her fore-feet deep in the straw, and her hind-feet going to heaven. Finding
me stick to her still like wax, for my mettle was up as hers was, away she
flew with me swifter than ever I went before, or since, I trow. She drove
full-head at the cobwall—“Oh, Jack, slip off,” screamed Annie—then she
turned like light, when I thought to crush her, and ground my left knee
against it. “Mux me,” I cried, for my breeches were broken, and short words
went the furthest—“if you kill me, you shall die with me.” Then she took
the court-yard gate at a leap, knocking my words between my teeth, and
then right over a quick set hedge, as if the sky were a breath to her; and
away for the water-meadows, while I lay on her neck like a child at the
breast and wished I had never been born. Straight away, all in the front of
the wind, and scattering clouds around her, all I knew of the speed we made
was the frightful flash of her shoulders, and her mane like trees in a
tempest. I felt the earth under us rushing away, and the air left far behind us,

and my breath came and went, and I prayed to God, and was sorry to be so
late of it.

All the long swift while, without power of thought, I clung to her crest
and shoulders, and dug my nails into her creases, and my toes into her
flank-part, and was proud of holding on so long, though sure of being
beaten. Then in her fury at feeling me still, she rushed at another device for
it, and leaped the wide water-trough sideways across, to and fro, till no
breath was left in me. The hazel-boughs took me too hard in the face, and
the tall dog-briers got hold of me, and the ache of my back was like
crimping a fish; till I longed to give up, thoroughly beaten, and lie there and
die in the cresses. But there came a shrill whistle from up the home-hill,
where the people had hurried to watch us; and the mare stopped as if with a
bullet, then set off for home with the speed of a swallow, and going as
smoothly and silently. I never had dreamed of such delicate motion, fluent,
and graceful, and ambient, soft as the breeze flitting over the flowers, but
swift as the summer lightning. I sat up again, but my strength was all spent,
and no time left to recover it, and though she rose at our gate like a bird, I
tumbled off into the mixen.

CHAPTER XI
TOM DESERVES HIS SUPPER

“Well done, lad,” Mr. Faggus said good
naturedly; for all were now gathered round me, as I
rose from the ground, somewhat tottering, and miry,
and crest-fallen, but otherwise none the worse
(having fallen upon my head, which is of
uncommon substance); nevertheless John Fry was
laughing, so that I longed to clout his ears for him;
“Not at all bad work, my boy; we may teach you to
ride by-and-by, I see; I thought not to see you stick
on so long—”
“I should have stuck on much longer, sir, if her
sides had not been wet. She was so slippery—”
“Boy, thou art right. She hath given many the slip. Ha, ha! Vex not,
Jack, that I laugh at thee. She is like a sweetheart to me, and better, than any
of them be. It would have gone to my heart if thou hadst conquered. None
but I can ride my Winnie mare.”
“Foul shame to thee then, Tom Faggus,” cried mother, coming up
suddenly, and speaking so that all were amazed, having never seen her
wrathful; “to put my boy, my boy, across her, as if his life were no more
than thine! The only son of his father, an honest man, and a quiet man, not a
roystering drunken robber! A man would have taken thy mad horse and
thee, and flung them both into horse-pond—ay, and what's more, I'll have it
done now, if a hair of his head is injured. Oh, my boy, my boy! What could
I do without thee? Put up the other arm, Johnny.” All the time mother was
scolding so, she was feeling me, and wiping me; while Faggus tried to look
greatly ashamed, having sense of the ways of women.
“Only look at his jacket, mother!” cried Annie; “and a shillingsworth
gone from his small-clothes!”

“What care I for his clothes, thou goose? Take that, and heed thine
own a bit.” And mother gave Annie a slap which sent her swinging up
against Mr. Faggus, and he caught her, and kissed and protected her, and
she looked at him very nicely, with great tears in her soft blue eyes. “Oh, fie
upon thee, fie upon thee!” cried mother (being yet more vexed with him,
because she had beaten Annie); “after all we have done for thee, and saved
thy worthless neck—and to try to kill my son for me! Never more shall
horse of thine enter stable here, since these be thy returns to me. Small
thanks to you, John Fry, I say, and you Bill Dadds, and you Jem Slocomb,
and all the rest of your coward lot; much you care for your master's son!
Afraid of that ugly beast yourselves, and you put a boy just breeched upon
him!”
“Wull, missus, what could us do?” began John; “Jan wudd goo, now
wudd't her, Jem? And how was us—”
“Jan indeed! Master John, if you please, to a lad of his years and
stature. And now, Tom Faggus, be off, if you please, and think yourself
lucky to go so; and if ever that horse comes into our yard, I'll hamstring him
myself if none of my cowards dare do it.”
Everybody looked at mother, to hear her talk like that, knowing how
quiet she was day by day and how pleasant to be cheated. And the men
began to shoulder their shovels, both so as to be away from her, and to go
and tell their wives of it. Winnie too was looking at her, being pointed at so
much, and wondering if she had done amiss. And then she came to me, and
trembled, and stooped her head, and asked my pardon, if she had been too
proud with me.
“Winnie shall stop here to-night,” said I, for Tom Faggus still said
never a word all the while; but began to buckle his things on, for he knew
that women are to be met with wool, as the cannon-balls were at the siege
of Tiverton Castle; “mother, I tell you, Winnie shall stop; else I will go
away with her, I never knew what it was, till now, to ride a horse worth
riding.”
“Young man,” said Tom Faggus, still preparing sternly to depart, “you
know more about a horse than any man on Exmoor. Your mother may well
be proud of you, but she need have had no fear. As if I, Tom Faggus, your
father's cousin—and the only thing I am proud of—would ever have let you
mount my mare, which dukes and princes have vainly sought, except for the

courage in your eyes, and the look of your father about you. I knew you
could ride when I saw you, and rarely you have conquered. But women
don't understand us. Good-bye, John; I am proud of you, and I hoped to
have done you pleasure. And indeed I came full of some courtly tales, that
would have made your hair stand up. But though not a crust have I tasted
since this time yesterday, having given my meat to a widow, I will go and
starve on the moor far sooner than eat the best supper that ever was cooked,
in a place that has forgotten me.” With that he fetched a heavy sigh, as if it
had been for my father; and feebly got upon Winnie's back, and she came to
say farewell to me. He lifted his hat to my mother, with a glance of sorrow,
but never a word; and to me he said, “Open the gate, Cousin John, if you
please. You have beaten her so, that she cannot leap it, poor thing.”
But before he was truly gone out of our yard, my mother came softly
after him, with her afternoon apron across her eyes, and one hand ready to
offer him. Nevertheless, he made as if he had not seen her, though he let his
horse go slowly.
“Stop, Cousin Tom,” my mother said, “a word with you, before you
go.”
“Why, bless my heart!” Tom Faggus cried, with the form of his
countenance so changed, that I verily thought another man must have
leaped into his clothes—“do I see my Cousin Sarah? I thought every one
was ashamed of me, and afraid to offer me shelter, since I lost my best
cousin, John Ridd. 'Come here,' he used to say, 'Tom, come here, when you
are worried, and my wife shall take good care of you.' 'Yes, dear John,' I
used to answer, 'I know she promised my mother so; but people have taken
to think against me, and so might Cousin Sarah.' Ah, he was a man, a man!
If you only heard how he answered me. But let that go, I am nothing now,
since the day I lost Cousin Ridd.” And with that he began to push on again;
but mother would not have it so.
“Oh, Tom, that was a loss indeed. And I am nothing either. And you
should try to allow for me; though I never found any one that did.” And
mother began to cry, though father had been dead so long; and I looked on
with a stupid surprise, having stopped from crying long ago.
“I can tell you one that will,” cried Tom, jumping off Winnie, in a
trice, and looking kindly at mother; “I can allow for you, Cousin Sarah, in
everything but one. I am in some ways a bad man myself; but I know the

value of a good one; and if you gave me orders, by God—” And he shook
his fists towards Bagworthy Wood, just heaving up black in the sundown.
“Hush, Tom, hush, for God's sake!” And mother meant me, without
pointing at me; at least I thought she did. For she ever had weaned me from
thoughts of revenge, and even from longings for judgment. “God knows
best, boy,” she used to say, “let us wait His time, without wishing it.” And
so, to tell the truth, I did; partly through her teaching, and partly through my
own mild temper, and my knowledge that father, after all, was killed
because he had thrashed them.
“Good-night, Cousin Sarah, good-night, Cousin Jack,” cried Tom,
taking to the mare again; “many a mile I have to ride, and not a bit inside of
me. No food or shelter this side of Exeford, and the night will be black as
pitch, I trow. But it serves me right for indulging the lad, being taken with
his looks so.”
“Cousin Tom,” said mother, and trying to get so that Annie and I could
not hear her; “it would be a sad and unkinlike thing for you to despise our
dwelling-house. We cannot entertain you, as the lordly inns on the road do;
and we have small change of victuals. But the men will go home, being
Saturday; and so you will have the fireside all to yourself and the children.
There are some few collops of red deer's flesh, and a ham just down from
the chimney, and some dried salmon from Lynmouth weir, and cold roast-
pig, and some oysters. And if none of those be to your liking, we could
roast two woodcocks in half an hour, and Annie would make the toast for
them. And the good folk made some mistake last week, going up the
country, and left a keg of old Holland cordial in the coving of the wood-
rick, having borrowed our Smiler, without asking leave. I fear there is
something unrighteous about it. But what can a poor widow do? John Fry
would have taken it, but for our Jack. Our Jack was a little too sharp for
him.”
Ay, that I was; John Fry had got it, like a billet under his apron, going
away in the gray of the morning, as if to kindle his fireplace. “Why, John,” I
said, “what a heavy log! Let me have one end of it.” “Thank'e, Jan, no need
of thiccy,” he answered, turning his back to me; “waife wanteth a log as
will last all day, to kape the crock a zimmerin.” And he banged his gate
upon my heels to make me stop and rub them. “Why, John,” said I, “you'm

got a log with round holes in the end of it. Who has been cutting gun-wads?
Just lift your apron, or I will.”
But, to return to Tom Faggus—he stopped to sup that night with us,
and took a little of everything; a few oysters first, and then dried salmon,
and then ham and eggs, done in small curled rashers, and then a few collops
of venison toasted, and next to that a little cold roast-pig, and a woodcock
on toast to finish with, before the Scheidam and hot water. And having
changed his wet things first, he seemed to be in fair appetite, and praised
Annie's cooking mightily, with a kind of noise like a smack of his lips, and
a rubbing of his hands together, whenever he could spare them.
He had gotten John Fry's best small-clothes on, for he said he was not
good enough to go into my father's (which mother kept to look at), nor man
enough to fill them. And in truth my mother was very glad that he refused,
when I offered them. But John was over-proud to have it in his power to say
that such a famous man had ever dwelt in any clothes of his; and afterwards
he made show of them. For Mr. Faggus's glory, then, though not so great as
now it is, was spreading very fast indeed all about our neighbourhood, and
even as far as Bridgewater.
Tom Faggus was a jovial soul, if ever there has been one, not making
bones of little things, nor caring to seek evil. There was about him such a
love of genuine human nature, that if a traveller said a good thing, he would
give him back his purse again. It is true that he took people's money more
by force than fraud; and the law (being used to the inverse method) was
bitterly moved against him, although he could quote precedent. These
things I do not understand; having seen so much of robbery (some legal,
some illegal), that I scarcely know, as here we say, one crow's foot from the
other. It is beyond me and above me, to discuss these subjects; and in truth I
love the law right well, when it doth support me, and when I can lay it
down to my liking, with prejudice to nobody. Loyal, too, to the King am I,
as behoves churchwarden; and ready to make the best of him, as he
generally requires. But after all, I could not see (until I grew much older,
and came to have some property) why Tom Faggus, working hard, was
called a robber and felon of great; while the King, doing nothing at all (as
became his dignity), was liege-lord, and paramount owner; with everybody
to thank him kindly for accepting tribute.

For the present, however, I learned nothing more as to what our
cousin's profession was; only that mother seemed frightened, and whispered
to him now and then not to talk of something, because of the children being
there; whereupon he always nodded with a sage expression, and applied
himself to hollands.
“Now let us go and see Winnie, Jack,” he said to me after supper; “for
the most part I feed her before myself; but she was so hot from the way you
drove her. Now she must be grieving for me, and I never let her grieve
long.”
I was too glad to go with him, and Annie came slyly after us. The filly
was walking to and fro on the naked floor of the stable (for he would not let
her have any straw, until he should make a bed for her), and without so
much as a headstall on, for he would not have her fastened. “Do you take
my mare for a dog?” he had said when John Fry brought him a halter. And
now she ran to him like a child, and her great eyes shone at the lanthorn.
“Hit me, Jack, and see what she will do. I will not let her hurt thee.”
He was rubbing her ears all the time he spoke, and she was leaning against
him. Then I made believe to strike him, and in a moment she caught me by
the waistband, and lifted me clean from the ground, and was casting me
down to trample upon me, when he stopped her suddenly.
“What think you of that, boy? Have you horse or dog that would do
that for you? Ay, and more than that she will do. If I were to whistle, by-
and-by, in the tone that tells my danger, she would break this stable-door
down, and rush into the room to me. Nothing will keep her from me then,
stone-wall or church-tower. Ah, Winnie, Winnie, you little witch, we shall
die together.”
Then he turned away with a joke, and began to feed her nicely, for she
was very dainty. Not a husk of oat would she touch that had been under the
breath of another horse, however hungry she might be. And with her oats he
mixed some powder, fetching it from his saddle-bags. What this was I could
not guess, neither would he tell me, but laughed and called it “star-
shavings.” He watched her eat every morsel of it, with two or three drinks
of pure water, ministered between whiles; and then he made her bed in a
form I had never seen before, and so we said “Good-night” to her.
Afterwards by the fireside he kept us very merry, sitting in the great
chimney-corner, and making us play games with him. And all the while he

was smoking tobacco in a manner I never had seen before, not using any
pipe for it, but having it rolled in little sticks about as long as my finger,
blunt at one end and sharp at the other. The sharp end he would put in his
mouth, and lay a brand of wood to the other, and then draw a white cloud of
curling smoke, and we never tired of watching him. I wanted him to let me
do it, but he said, “No, my son; it is not meant for boys.” Then Annie put up
her lips and asked, with both hands on his knees (for she had taken to him
wonderfully), “Is it meant for girls then cousin Tom?” But she had better
not have asked, for he gave it her to try, and she shut both eyes, and sucked
at it. One breath, however, was quite enough, for it made her cough so
violently that Lizzie and I must thump her back until she was almost crying.
To atone for that, cousin Tom set to, and told us whole pages of stories, not
about his own doings at all, but strangely enough they seemed to concern
almost every one else we had ever heard of. Without halting once for a
word or a deed, his tales flowed onward as freely and brightly as the flames
of the wood up the chimney, and with no smaller variety. For he spoke with
the voices of twenty people, giving each person the proper manner, and the
proper place to speak from; so that Annie and Lizzie ran all about, and
searched the clock and the linen-press. And he changed his face every
moment so, and with such power of mimicry that without so much as a
smile of his own, he made even mother laugh so that she broke her new
tenpenny waistband; and as for us children, we rolled on the floor, and
Betty Muxworthy roared in the wash-up.

CHAPTER XII
A MAN JUSTLY POPULAR

Now although Mr. Faggus was so
clever, and generous, and celebrated, I know
not whether, upon the whole, we were rather
proud of him as a member of our family, or
inclined to be ashamed of him. And indeed I
think that the sway of the balance hung upon
the company we were in. For instance, with
the boys at Brendon—for there is no village
at Oare—I was exceeding proud to talk of
him, and would freely brag of my Cousin
Tom. But with the rich parsons of the
neighbourhood, or the justices (who came
round now and then, and were glad to ride
up to a warm farm-house), or even the well-
to-do tradesmen of Porlock—in a word, any
settled power, which was afraid of losing things—with all of them we were
very shy of claiming our kinship to that great outlaw.
And sure, I should pity, as well as condemn him though our ways in
the world were so different, knowing as I do his story; which knowledge,
methinks, would often lead us to let alone God's prerogative—judgment,
and hold by man's privilege—pity. Not that I would find excuse for Tom's
downright dishonesty, which was beyond doubt a disgrace to him, and no
credit to his kinsfolk; only that it came about without his meaning any harm
or seeing how he took to wrong; yet gradually knowing it. And now, to save
any further trouble, and to meet those who disparage him (without
allowance for the time or the crosses laid upon him), I will tell the history
of him, just as if he were not my cousin, and hoping to be heeded. And I
defy any man to say that a word of this is either false, or in any way
coloured by family. Much cause he had to be harsh with the world; and yet
all acknowledged him very pleasant, when a man gave up his money. And

often and often he paid the toll for the carriage coming after him, because
he had emptied their pockets, and would not add inconvenience. By trade
he had been a blacksmith, in the town of Northmolton, in Devonshire, a
rough rude place at the end of Exmoor, so that many people marvelled if
such a man was bred there. Not only could he read and write, but he had
solid substance; a piece of land worth a hundred pounds, and right of
common for two hundred sheep, and a score and a half of beasts, lifting up
or lying down. And being left an orphan (with all these cares upon him) he
began to work right early, and made such a fame at the shoeing of horses,
that the farriers of Barum were like to lose their custom. And indeed he won
a golden Jacobus for the best-shod nag in the north of Devon, and some say
that he never was forgiven.
As to that, I know no more, except that men are jealous. But whether it
were that, or not, he fell into bitter trouble within a month of his victory;
when his trade was growing upon him, and his sweetheart ready to marry
him. For he loved a maid of Southmolton (a currier's daughter I think she
was, and her name was Betsy Paramore), and her father had given consent;
and Tom Faggus, wishing to look his best, and be clean of course, had a
tailor at work upstairs for him, who had come all the way from Exeter. And
Betsy's things were ready too—for which they accused him afterwards, as if
he could help that—when suddenly, like a thunderbolt, a lawyer's writ fell
upon him.
This was the beginning of a law-suit with Sir Robert Bampfylde, a
gentleman of the neighbourhood, who tried to oust him from his common,
and drove his cattle and harassed them. And by that suit of law poor Tom
was ruined altogether, for Sir Robert could pay for much swearing; and then
all his goods and his farm were sold up, and even his smithery taken. But he
saddled his horse, before they could catch him, and rode away to
Southmolton, looking more like a madman than a good farrier, as the people
said who saw him. But when he arrived there, instead of comfort, they
showed him the face of the door alone; for the news of his loss was before
him, and Master Paramore was a sound, prudent man, and a high member
of the town council. It is said that they even gave him notice to pay for
Betsy's wedding-clothes, now that he was too poor to marry her. This may
be false, and indeed I doubt it; in the first place, because Southmolton is a
busy place for talking; and in the next, that I do not think the action would

have lain at law, especially as the maid lost nothing, but used it all for her
wedding next month with Dick Vellacott, of Mockham.
All this was very sore upon Tom; and he took it to heart so grievously,
that he said, as a better man might have said, being loose of mind and
property, “The world hath preyed on me like a wolf. God help me now to
prey on the world.”
And in sooth it did seem, for a while, as if Providence were with him;
for he took rare toll on the highway, and his name was soon as good as gold
anywhere this side of Bristowe. He studied his business by night and by
day, with three horses all in hard work, until he had made a fine reputation;
and then it was competent to him to rest, and he had plenty left for charity.
And I ought to say for society too, for he truly loved high society, treating
squires and noblemen (who much affected his company) to the very best
fare of the hostel. And they say that once the King's Justitiaries, being upon
circuit, accepted his invitation, declaring merrily that if never true bill had
been found against him, mine host should now be qualified to draw one.
And so the landlords did; and he always paid them handsomely, so that all
of them were kind to him, and contended for his visits. Let it be known in
any township that Mr. Faggus was taking his leisure at the inn, and
straightway all the men flocked thither to drink his health without outlay,
and all the women to admire him; while the children were set at the cross-
roads to give warning of any officers. One of his earliest meetings was with
Sir Robert Bampfylde himself, who was riding along the Barum road with
only one serving-man after him. Tom Faggus put a pistol to his head, being
then obliged to be violent, through want of reputation; while the serving-
man pretended to be a long way round the corner. Then the baronet pulled
out his purse, quite trembling in the hurry of his politeness. Tom took the
purse, and his ring, and time-piece, and then handed them back with a very
low bow, saying that it was against all usage for him to rob a robber. Then
he turned to the unfaithful knave, and trounced him right well for his
cowardice, and stripped him of all his property.
But now Mr. Faggus kept only one horse, lest the Government should
steal them; and that one was the young mare Winnie. How he came by her
he never would tell, but I think that she was presented to him by a certain
Colonel, a lover of sport, and very clever in horseflesh, whose life Tom had
saved from some gamblers. When I have added that Faggus as yet had

never been guilty of bloodshed (for his eyes, and the click of his pistol at
first, and now his high reputation made all his wishes respected), and that
he never robbed a poor man, neither insulted a woman, but was very good
to the Church, and of hot patriotic opinions, and full of jest and jollity, I
have said as much as is fair for him, and shown why he was so popular.
Everybody cursed the Doones, who lived apart disdainfully. But all good
people liked Mr. Faggus—when he had not robbed them—and many a poor
sick man or woman blessed him for other people's money; and all the
hostlers, stable-boys, and tapsters entirely worshipped him.
I have been rather long, and perhaps tedious, in my account of him,
lest at any time hereafter his character should be misunderstood, and his
good name disparaged; whereas he was my second cousin, and the lover of
my—But let that bide. 'Tis a melancholy story.
He came again about three months afterwards, in the beginning of the
spring-time, and brought me a beautiful new carbine, having learned my
love of such things, and my great desire to shoot straight. But mother would
not let me have the gun, until he averred upon his honour that he had
bought it honestly. And so he had, no doubt, so far as it is honest to buy
with money acquired rampantly. Scarce could I stop to make my bullets in
the mould which came along with it, but must be off to the Quarry Hill, and
new target I had made there. And he taught me then how to ride bright
Winnie, who was grown since I had seen her, but remembered me most
kindly. After making much of Annie, who had a wondrous liking for him—
and he said he was her godfather, but God knows how he could have been,
unless they confirmed him precociously—away he went, and young
Winnie's sides shone like a cherry by candlelight.
Now I feel that of those boyish days I have little more to tell, because
everything went quietly, as the world for the most part does with us. I began
to work at the farm in earnest, and tried to help my mother, and when I
remembered Lorna Doone, it seemed no more than the thought of a dream,
which I could hardly call to mind. Now who cares to know how many
bushels of wheat we grew to the acre, or how the cattle milched till we ate
them, or what the turn of the seasons was? But my stupid self seemed like
to be the biggest of all the cattle; for having much to look after the sheep,
and being always in kind appetite, I grew four inches longer in every year
of my farming, and a matter of two inches wider; until there was no man of

my size to be seen elsewhere upon Exmoor. Let that pass: what odds to any
how tall or wide I be? There is no Doone's door at Plover's Barrows and if
there were I could never go through it. They vexed me so much about my
size, long before I had completed it, girding at me with paltry jokes whose
wit was good only to stay at home, that I grew shame-faced about the
matter, and feared to encounter a looking-glass. But mother was very proud,
and said she never could have too much of me.
The worst of all to make me ashamed of bearing my head so high—a
thing I saw no way to help, for I never could hang my chin down, and my
back was like a gatepost whenever I tried to bend it—the worst of all was
our little Eliza, who never could come to a size herself, though she had the
wine from the Sacrament at Easter and Allhallowmas, only to be small and
skinny, sharp, and clever crookedly. Not that her body was out of the
straight (being too small for that perhaps), but that her wit was full of
corners, jagged, and strange, and uncomfortable. You never could tell what
she might say next; and I like not that kind of women. Now God forgive me
for talking so of my own father's daughter, and so much the more by reason
that my father could not help it. The right way is to face the matter, and then
be sorry for every one. My mother fell grievously on a slide, which John
Fry had made nigh the apple-room door, and hidden with straw from the
stable, to cover his own great idleness. My father laid John's nose on the
ice, and kept him warm in spite of it; but it was too late for Eliza. She was
born next day with more mind than body—the worst thing that can befall a
man.
But Annie, my other sister, was now a fine fair girl, beautiful to
behold. I could look at her by the fireside, for an hour together, when I was
not too sleepy, and think of my dear father. And she would do the same
thing by me, only wait the between of the blazes. Her hair was done up in a
knot behind, but some would fall over her shoulders; and the dancing of the
light was sweet to see through a man's eyelashes. There never was a face
that showed the light or the shadow of feeling, as if the heart were sun to it,
more than our dear Annie's did. To look at her carefully, you might think
that she was not dwelling on anything; and then she would know you were
looking at her, and those eyes would tell all about it. God knows that I try to
be simple enough, to keep to His meaning in me, and not make the worst of
His children. Yet often have I been put to shame, and ready to bite my

tongue off, after speaking amiss of anybody, and letting out my littleness,
when suddenly mine eyes have met the pure soft gaze of Annie.
As for the Doones, they were thriving still, and no one to come against
them; except indeed by word of mouth, to which they lent no heed
whatever. Complaints were made from time to time, both in high and low
quarters (as the rank might be of the people robbed), and once or twice in
the highest of all, to wit, the King himself. But His Majesty made a good
joke about it (not meaning any harm, I doubt), and was so much pleased
with himself thereupon, that he quite forgave the mischief. Moreover, the
main authorities were a long way off; and the Chancellor had no cattle on
Exmoor; and as for my lord the Chief Justice, some rogue had taken his
silver spoons; whereupon his lordship swore that never another man would
he hang until he had that one by the neck. Therefore the Doones went on as
they listed, and none saw fit to meddle with them. For the only man who
would have dared to come to close quarters with them, that is to say Tom
Faggus, himself was a quarry for the law, if ever it should be unhooded.
Moreover, he had transferred his business to the neighbourhood of Wantage,
in the county of Berks, where he found the climate drier, also good downs
and commons excellent for galloping, and richer yeomen than ours be, and
better roads to rob them on.
Some folk, who had wiser attended to their own affairs, said that I
(being sizeable now, and able to shoot not badly) ought to do something
against those Doones, and show what I was made of. But for a time I was
very bashful, shaking when called upon suddenly, and blushing as deep as a
maiden; for my strength was not come upon me, and mayhap I had grown
in front of it. And again, though I loved my father still, and would fire at a
word about him, I saw not how it would do him good for me to harm his
injurers. Some races are of revengeful kind, and will for years pursue their
wrong, and sacrifice this world and the next for a moment's foul
satisfaction, but methinks this comes of some black blood, perverted and
never purified. And I doubt but men of true English birth are stouter than so
to be twisted, though some of the women may take that turn, if their own
life runs unkindly.
Let that pass—I am never good at talking of things beyond me. All I
know is, that if I had met the Doone who had killed my father, I would
gladly have thrashed him black and blue, supposing I were able; but would

never have fired a gun at him, unless he began that game with me, or fell
upon more of my family, or were violent among women. And to do them
justice, my mother and Annie were equally kind and gentle, but Eliza would
flame and grow white with contempt, and not trust herself to speak to us.
Now a strange thing came to pass that winter, when I was twenty-one
years old, a very strange thing, which affrighted the rest, and made me feel
uncomfortable. Not that there was anything in it, to do harm to any one,
only that none could explain it, except by attributing it to the devil. The
weather was very mild and open, and scarcely any snow fell; at any rate,
none lay on the ground, even for an hour, in the highest part of Exmoor; a
thing which I knew not before nor since, as long as I can remember. But the
nights were wonderfully dark, as though with no stars in the heaven; and all
day long the mists were rolling upon the hills and down them, as if the
whole land were a wash-house. The moorland was full of snipes and teal,
and curlews flying and crying, and lapwings flapping heavily, and ravens
hovering round dead sheep; yet no redshanks nor dottrell, and scarce any
golden plovers (of which we have great store generally) but vast lonely
birds, that cried at night, and moved the whole air with their pinions; yet no
man ever saw them. It was dismal as well as dangerous now for any man to
go fowling (which of late I loved much in the winter) because the fog
would come down so thick that the pan of the gun was reeking, and the
fowl out of sight ere the powder kindled, and then the sound of the piece
was so dead, that the shooter feared harm, and glanced over his shoulder.
But the danger of course was far less in this than in losing of the track, and
falling into the mires, or over the brim of a precipice.
Nevertheless, I must needs go out, being young and very stupid, and
feared of being afraid; a fear which a wise man has long cast by, having
learned of the manifold dangers which ever and ever encompass us. And
beside this folly and wildness of youth, perchance there was something, I
know not what, of the joy we have in uncertainty. Mother, in fear of my
missing home—though for that matter, I could smell supper, when hungry,
through a hundred land-yards of fog—my dear mother, who thought of me
ten times for one thought about herself, gave orders to ring the great sheep-
bell, which hung above the pigeon-cote, every ten minutes of the day, and
the sound came through the plaits of fog, and I was vexed about it, like the
letters of a copy-book. It reminded me, too, of Blundell's bell, and the grief
to go into school again.

But during those two months of fog (for we had it all the winter), the
saddest and the heaviest thing was to stand beside the sea. To be upon the
beach yourself, and see the long waves coming in; to know that they are
long waves, but only see a piece of them; and to hear them lifting roundly,
swelling over smooth green rocks, plashing down in the hollow corners, but
bearing on all the same as ever, soft and sleek and sorrowful, till their little
noise is over.

One old man who lived at Lynmouth, seeking to be buried there,
having been more than half over the world, though shy to speak about it,
and fain to come home to his birthplace, this old Will Watcombe (who
dwelt by the water) said that our strange winter arose from a thing he called
the “Gulf-stream”, rushing up Channel suddenly. He said it was hot water,
almost fit for a man to shave with, and it threw all our cold water out, and
ruined the fish and the spawning-time, and a cold spring would come after
it. I was fond of going to Lynmouth on Sunday to hear this old man talk, for
sometimes he would discourse with me, when nobody else could move him.
He told me that this powerful flood set in upon our west so hard sometimes
once in ten years, and sometimes not for fifty, and the Lord only knew the
sense of it; but that when it came, therewith came warmth and clouds, and
fog, and moisture, and nuts, and fruit, and even shells; and all the tides were
thrown abroad. As for nuts he winked awhile, and chewed a piece of
tobacco; yet did I not comprehend him. Only afterwards I heard that nuts
with liquid kernels came, travelling on the Gulf stream; for never before
was known so much foreign cordial landed upon our coast, floating ashore
by mistake in the fog, and (what with the tossing and the mist) too much
astray to learn its duty.
Folk, who are ever too prone to talk, said that Will Watcombe himself
knew better than anybody else about this drift of the Gulf-stream, and the

places where it would come ashore, and the caves that took the in-draught.
But De Whichehalse, our great magistrate, certified that there was no proof
of unlawful importation; neither good cause to suspect it, at a time of
Christian charity. And we knew that it was a foul thing for some quarrymen
to say that night after night they had been digging a new cellar at Ley
Manor to hold the little marks of respect found in the caverns at high-water
weed. Let that be, it is none of my business to speak evil of dignities; duly
we common people joked of the “Gulp-stream,” as we called it.
But the thing which astonished and frightened us so, was not, I do
assure you, the landing of foreign spirits, nor the loom of a lugger at
twilight in the gloom of the winter moonrise. That which made us crouch in
by the fire, or draw the bed-clothes over us, and try to think of something
else, was a strange mysterious sound.
At grey of night, when the sun was gone, and no red in the west
remained, neither were stars forthcoming, suddenly a wailing voice rose
along the valleys, and a sound in the air, as of people running. It mattered
not whether you stood on the moor, or crouched behind rocks away from it,
or down among reedy places; all as one the sound would come, now from
the heart of the earth beneath, now overhead bearing down on you. And
then there was rushing of something by, and melancholy laughter, and the
hair of a man would stand on end before he could reason properly.
God, in His mercy, knows that I am stupid enough for any man, and
very slow of impression, nor ever could bring myself to believe that our
Father would let the evil one get the upper hand of us. But when I had heard
that sound three times, in the lonely gloom of the evening fog, and the cold
that followed the lines of air, I was loath to go abroad by night, even so far
as the stables, and loved the light of a candle more, and the glow of a fire
with company.
There were many stories about it, of course, all over the breadth of the
moorland. But those who had heard it most often declared that it must be
the wail of a woman's voice, and the rustle of robes fleeing horribly, and
fiends in the fog going after her. To that, however, I paid no heed, when
anybody was with me; only we drew more close together, and barred the
doors at sunset.

CHAPTER XIII
MASTER HUCKABACK COMES IN

Mr. Reuben Huckaback, whom many
good folk in Dulverton will remember long
after my time, was my mother's uncle, being
indeed her mother's brother. He owned the
very best shop in the town, and did a fine
trade in soft ware, especially when the pack-
horses came safely in at Christmas-time. And
we being now his only kindred (except
indeed his granddaughter, little Ruth
Huckaback, of whom no one took any heed),
mother beheld it a Christian duty to keep as
well as could be with him, both for love of a
nice old man, and for the sake of her
children. And truly, the Dulverton people said
that he was the richest man in their town, and could buy up half the county
armigers; 'ay, and if it came to that, they would like to see any man, at
Bampton, or at Wivelscombe, and you might say almost Taunton, who
could put down golden Jacobus and Carolus against him.
Now this old gentleman—so they called him, according to his money;
and I have seen many worse ones, more violent and less wealthy—he must
needs come away that time to spend the New Year-tide with us; not that he
wanted to do it (for he hated country-life), but because my mother pressing,
as mothers will do to a good bag of gold, had wrung a promise from him;
and the only boast of his life was that never yet had he broken his word, at
least since he opened business.
Now it pleased God that Christmas-time (in spite of all the fogs) to
send safe home to Dulverton, and what was more, with their loads quite
safe, a goodly string of packhorses. Nearly half of their charge was for
Uncle Reuben, and he knew how to make the most of it. Then having
balanced his debits and credits, and set the writs running against defaulters,

as behoves a good Christian at Christmas-tide, he saddled his horse, and
rode off towards Oare, with a good stout coat upon him, and leaving Ruth
and his head man plenty to do, and little to eat, until they should see him
again.
It had been settled between us that we should expect him soon after
noon on the last day of December. For the Doones being lazy and fond of
bed, as the manner is of dishonest folk, the surest way to escape them was
to travel before they were up and about, to-wit, in the forenoon of the day.
But herein we reckoned without our host: for being in high festivity, as
became good Papists, the robbers were too lazy, it seems, to take the trouble
of going to bed; and forth they rode on the Old Year-morning, not with any
view of business, but purely in search of mischief.
We had put off our dinner till one o'clock (which to me was a sad
foregoing), and there was to be a brave supper at six of the clock, upon New
Year's-eve; and the singers to come with their lanthorns, and do it outside
the parlour-window, and then have hot cup till their heads should go round,
after making away with the victuals. For although there was nobody now in
our family to be churchwarden of Oare, it was well admitted that we were
the people entitled alone to that dignity; and though Nicholas Snowe was in
office by name, he managed it only by mother's advice; and a pretty mess
he made of it, so that every one longed for a Ridd again, soon as ever I
should be old enough. This Nicholas Snowe was to come in the evening,
with his three tall comely daughters, strapping girls, and well skilled in the
dairy; and the story was all over the parish, on a stupid conceit of John
Fry's, that I should have been in love with all three, if there had been but
one of them. These Snowes were to come, and come they did, partly
because Mr. Huckaback liked to see fine young maidens, and partly because
none but Nicholas Snowe could smoke a pipe now all around our parts,
except of the very high people, whom we durst never invite. And Uncle
Ben, as we all knew well, was a great hand at his pipe, and would sit for
hours over it, in our warm chimney-corner, and never want to say a word,
unless it were inside him; only he liked to have somebody there over
against him smoking.
Now when I came in, before one o'clock, after seeing to the cattle—for
the day was thicker than ever, and we must keep the cattle close at home, if
we wished to see any more of them—I fully expected to find Uncle Ben

sitting in the fireplace, lifting one cover and
then another, as his favourite manner was, and
making sweet mouths over them; for he loved
our bacon rarely, and they had no good leeks at
Dulverton; and he was a man who always
would see his business done himself. But there
instead of my finding him with his quaint dry
face pulled out at me, and then shut up sharp
not to be cheated—who should run out but
Betty Muxworthy, and poke me with a
saucepan lid.
“Get out of that now, Betty,” I said in my
politest manner, for really Betty was now
become a great domestic evil. She would have
her own way so, and of all things the most
distressful was for a man to try to reason.
“Zider-press,” cried Betty again, for she
thought it a fine joke to call me that, because
of my size, and my hatred of it; “here be a rare get up, anyhow.”
“A rare good dinner, you mean, Betty. Well, and I have a rare good
appetite.” With that I wanted to go and smell it, and not to stop for Betty.
“Troost thee for thiccy, Jan Ridd. But thee must keep it bit langer, I
reckon. Her baint coom, Maister Ziderpress. Whatt'e mak of that now?”
“Do you mean to say that Uncle Ben has not arrived yet, Betty?”
“Raived! I knaws nout about that, whuther a hath of noo. Only I tell 'e,
her baint coom. Rackon them Dooneses hath gat 'un.”
And Betty, who hated Uncle Ben, because he never gave her a groat,
and she was not allowed to dine with him, I am sorry to say that Betty
Muxworthy grinned all across, and poked me again with the greasy
saucepan cover. But I misliking so to be treated, strode through the kitchen
indignantly, for Betty behaved to me even now, as if I were only Eliza.
“Oh, Johnny, Johnny,” my mother cried, running out of the grand
show-parlour, where the case of stuffed birds was, and peacock-feathers,
and the white hare killed by grandfather; “I am so glad you are come at last.
There is something sadly amiss, Johnny.”

Mother had upon her wrists something very wonderful, of the nature of
fal-lal as we say, and for which she had an inborn turn, being of good draper
family, and polished above the yeomanry. Nevertheless I could never bear
it, partly because I felt it to be out of place in our good farm-house, partly
because I hate frippery, partly because it seemed to me to have nothing to
do with father, and partly because I never could tell the reason of my hating
it. And yet the poor soul had put them on, not to show her hands off (which
were above her station) but simply for her children's sake, because Uncle
Ben had given them. But another thing, I never could bear for man or
woman to call me, “Johnny,” “Jack,” or “John,” I cared not which; and that
was honest enough, and no smallness of me there, I say.
“Well, mother, what is the matter, then?”
“I am sure you need not be angry, Johnny. I only hope it is nothing to
grieve about, instead of being angry. You are very sweet-tempered, I know,
John Ridd, and perhaps a little too sweet at times”—here she meant the
Snowe girls, and I hanged my head—“but what would you say if the people
there”—she never would call them “Doones”—“had gotten your poor
Uncle Reuben, horse, and Sunday coat, and all?”
“Why, mother, I should be sorry for them. He would set up a shop by
the river-side, and come away with all their money.”
“That all you have to say, John! And my dinner done to a very turn,
and the supper all fit to go down, and no worry, only to eat and be done
with it! And all the new plates come from Watchett, with the Watchett blue
upon them, at the risk of the lives of everybody, and the capias from good
Aunt Jane for stuffing a curlew with onion before he begins to get cold, and
make a woodcock of him, and the way to turn the flap over in the inside of
a roasting pig—”
“Well, mother dear, I am very sorry. But let us have our dinner. You
know we promised not to wait for him after one o'clock; and you only make
us hungry. Everything will be spoiled, mother, and what a pity to think of!
After that I will go to seek for him in the thick of the fog, like a needle in a
hay-band. That is to say, unless you think”—for she looked very grave
about it—“unless you really think, mother, that I ought to go without
dinner.”
“Oh no, John, I never thought that, thank God! Bless Him for my
children's appetites; and what is Uncle Ben to them?”

So we made a very good dinner indeed, though wishing that he could
have some of it, and wondering how much to leave for him; and then, as no
sound of his horse had been heard, I set out with my gun to look for him.
I followed the track on the side of the hill, from the farm-yard, where
the sledd-marks are—for we have no wheels upon Exmoor yet, nor ever
shall, I suppose; though a dunder-headed man tried it last winter, and broke
his axle piteously, and was nigh to break his neck—and after that I went all
along on the ridge of the rabbit-cleve, with the brook running thin in the
bottom; and then down to the Lynn stream and leaped it, and so up the hill
and the moor beyond. The fog hung close all around me then, when I turned
the crest of the highland, and the gorse both before and behind me looked
like a man crouching down in ambush. But still there was a good cloud of
daylight, being scarce three of the clock yet, and when a lead of red deer
came across, I could tell them from sheep even now. I was half inclined to
shoot at them, for the children did love venison; but they drooped their
heads so, and looked so faithful, that it seemed hard measure to do it. If one
of them had bolted away, no doubt I had let go at him.
After that I kept on the track, trudging very stoutly, for nigh upon three
miles, and my beard (now beginning to grow at some length) was full of
great drops and prickly, whereat I was very proud. I had not so much as a
dog with me, and the place was unkind and lonesome, and the rolling
clouds very desolate; and now if a wild sheep ran across he was scared at
me as an enemy; and I for my part could not tell the meaning of the marks
on him. We called all this part Gibbet-moor, not being in our parish; but
though there were gibbets enough upon it, most part of the bodies was gone
for the value of the chains, they said, and the teaching of young
chirurgeons. But of all this I had little fear, being no more a schoolboy now,
but a youth well-acquaint with Exmoor, and the wise art of the sign-posts,
whereby a man, who barred the road, now opens it up both ways with his
finger-bones, so far as rogues allow him. My carbine was loaded and
freshly primed, and I knew myself to be even now a match in strength for
any two men of the size around our neighbourhood, except in the Glen
Doone. “Girt Jan Ridd,” I was called already, and folk grew feared to
wrestle with me; though I was tired of hearing about it, and often longed to
be smaller. And most of all upon Sundays, when I had to make way up our
little church, and the maidens tittered at me.

The soft white mist came thicker around me, as the evening fell; and
the peat ricks here and there, and the furze-hucks of the summer-time, were
all out of shape in the twist of it. By-and-by, I began to doubt where I was,
or how come there, not having seen a gibbet lately; and then I heard the
draught of the wind up a hollow place with rocks to it; and for the first time
fear broke out (like cold sweat) upon me. And yet I knew what a fool I was,
to fear nothing but a sound! But when I stopped to listen, there was no
sound, more than a beating noise, and that was all inside me. Therefore I
went on again, making company of myself, and keeping my gun quite
ready.
Now when I came to an unknown place, where a stone was set up
endwise, with a faint red cross upon it, and a polish from some conflict, I
gathered my courage to stop and think, having sped on the way too hotly.
Against that stone I set my gun, trying my spirit to leave it so, but keeping
with half a hand for it; and then what to do next was the wonder. As for
finding Uncle Ben that was his own business, or at any rate his executor's;
first I had to find myself, and plentifully would thank God to find myself at
home again, for the sake of all our family.
The volumes of the mist came rolling at me (like great logs of wood,
pillowed out with sleepiness), and between them there was nothing more
than waiting for the next one. Then everything went out of sight, and glad
was I of the stone behind me, and view of mine own shoes. Then a distant
noise went by me, as of many horses galloping, and in my fright I set my
gun and said, “God send something to shoot at.” Yet nothing came, and my
gun fell back, without my will to lower it.
But presently, while I was thinking “What a fool I am!” arose as if
from below my feet, so that the great stone trembled, that long, lamenting
lonesome sound, as of an evil spirit not knowing what to do with it. For the
moment I stood like a root, without either hand or foot to help me, and the
hair of my head began to crawl, lifting my hat, as a snail lifts his house; and
my heart like a shuttle went to and fro. But finding no harm to come of it,
neither visible form approaching, I wiped my forehead, and hoped for the
best, and resolved to run every step of the way, till I drew our own latch
behind me.
Yet here again I was disappointed, for no sooner was I come to the
cross-ways by the black pool in the hole, but I heard through the patter of

my own feet a rough low sound very close in the fog, as of a hobbled sheep
a-coughing. I listened, and feared, and yet listened again, though I wanted
not to hear it. For being in haste of the homeward road, and all my heart
having heels to it, loath I was to stop in the dusk for the sake of an aged
wether. Yet partly my love of all animals, and partly my fear of the farmer's
disgrace, compelled me to go to the succour, and the noise was coming
nearer. A dry short wheezing sound it was, barred with coughs and want of
breath; but thus I made the meaning of it.
“Lord have mercy upon me! O Lord, upon my soul have mercy! An if I
cheated Sam Hicks last week, Lord knowest how well he deserved it, and
lied in every stocking's mouth—oh Lord, where be I a-going?”
These words, with many jogs between them, came to me through the
darkness, and then a long groan and a choking. I made towards the sound,
as nigh as ever I could guess, and presently was met, point-blank, by the
head of a mountain-pony. Upon its back lay a man bound down, with his
feet on the neck and his head to the tail, and his arms falling down like
stirrups. The wild little nag was scared of its life by the unaccustomed
burden, and had been tossing and rolling hard, in desire to get ease of it.
Before the little horse could turn, I caught him, jaded as he was, by his
wet and grizzled forelock, and he saw that it was vain to struggle, but strove
to bite me none the less, until I smote him upon the nose.
“Good and worthy sir,” I said to the man who was riding so roughly;
“fear nothing; no harm shall come to thee.”
“Help, good friend, whoever thou art,” he gasped, but could not look at
me, because his neck was jerked so; “God hath sent thee, and not to rob me,
because it is done already.”
“What, Uncle Ben!” I cried, letting go the horse in amazement, that the
richest man in Dulverton—“Uncle Ben here in this plight! What, Mr.
Reuben Huckaback!”
“An honest hosier and draper, serge and longcloth warehouseman”—
he groaned from rib to rib—“at the sign of the Gartered Kitten in the loyal
town of Dulverton. For God's sake, let me down, good fellow, from this
accursed marrow-bone; and a groat of good money will I pay thee, safe in
my house to Dulverton; but take notice that the horse is mine, no less than
the nag they robbed from me.”

“What, Uncle Ben, dost thou not know me, thy dutiful nephew John
Ridd?”
Not to make a long story of it, I cut the thongs that bound him, and set
him astride on the little horse; but he was too weak to stay so. Therefore I
mounted him on my back, turning the horse into horse-steps, and leading
the pony by the cords which I fastened around his nose, set out for Plover's
Barrows.
Uncle Ben went fast asleep on my back, being jaded and shaken
beyond his strength, for a man of three-score and five; and as soon he felt
assured of safety he would talk no more. And to tell the truth he snored so
loudly, that I could almost believe that fearful noise in the fog every night
came all the way from Dulverton.
Now as soon as ever I brought him in, we set him up in the chimney-
corner, comfortable and handsome; and it was no little delight to me to get
him off my back; for, like his own fortune, Uncle Ben was of a good round
figure. He gave his long coat a shake or two, and he stamped about in the
kitchen, until he was sure of his whereabouts, and then he fell asleep again
until supper should be ready.
“He shall marry Ruth,” he said by-and-by to himself, and not to me;
“he shall marry Ruth for this, and have my little savings, soon as they be
worth the having. Very little as yet, very little indeed; and ever so much
gone to-day along of them rascal robbers.”
My mother made a dreadful stir, of course, about Uncle Ben being in
such a plight as this; so I left him to her care and Annie's, and soon they fed
him rarely, while I went out to see to the comfort of the captured pony. And
in truth he was worth the catching, and served us very well afterwards,
though Uncle Ben was inclined to claim him for his business at Dulverton,
where they have carts and that like. “But,” I said, “you shall have him, sir,
and welcome, if you will only ride him home as first I found you riding
him.” And with that he dropped it.
A very strange old man he was, short in his manner, though long of
body, glad to do the contrary things to what any one expected of him, and
always looking sharp at people, as if he feared to be cheated. This surprised
me much at first, because it showed his ignorance of what we farmers are—
an upright race, as you may find, scarcely ever cheating indeed, except
upon market-day, and even then no more than may be helped by reason of

buyers expecting it. Now our simple ways were a puzzle to him, as I told
him very often; but he only laughed, and rubbed his mouth with the back of
his dry shining hand, and I think he shortly began to languish for want of
some one to higgle with. I had a great mind to give him the pony, because
he thought himself cheated in that case; only he would conclude that I did it
with some view to a legacy.
Of course, the Doones, and nobody else, had robbed good Uncle
Reuben; and then they grew sportive, and took his horse, an especially
sober nag, and bound the master upon the wild one, for a little change as
they told him. For two or three hours they had fine enjoyment chasing him
through the fog, and making much sport of his groanings; and then waxing
hungry, they went their way, and left him to opportunity. Now Mr.
Huckaback growing able to walk in a few days' time, became thereupon
impatient, and could not be brought to understand why he should have been
robbed at all.
“I have never deserved it,” he said to himself, not knowing much of
Providence, except with a small p to it; “I have never deserved it, and will
not stand it in the name of our lord the King, not I!” At other times he
would burst forth thus: “Three-score years and five have I lived an honest
and laborious life, yet never was I robbed before. And now to be robbed in
my old age, to be robbed for the first time now!”
Thereupon of course we would tell him how truly thankful he ought to
be for never having been robbed before, in spite of living so long in this
world, and that he was taking a very ungrateful, not to say ungracious, view,
in thus repining, and feeling aggrieved; when anyone else would have knelt
and thanked God for enjoying so long an immunity. But say what we
would, it was all as one. Uncle Ben stuck fast to it, that he had nothing to
thank God for.

CHAPTER XIV
A MOTION WHICH ENDS IN A MULL

Instead of minding his New-Year pudding,
Master Huckaback carried on so about his mighty
grievance, that at last we began to think there must
be something in it, after all; especially as he assured
us that choice and costly presents for the young
people of our household were among the goods
divested. But mother told him her children had
plenty, and wanted no gold and silver, and little
Eliza spoke up and said, “You can give us the pretty
things, Uncle Ben, when we come in the summer to
see you.”
Our mother reproved Eliza for this, although it was the heel of her own
foot; and then to satisfy our uncle, she promised to call Farmer Nicholas
Snowe, to be of our council that evening, “And if the young maidens would
kindly come, without taking thought to smoothe themselves, why it would
be all the merrier, and who knew but what Uncle Huckaback might bless
the day of his robbery, etc., etc.—and thorough good honest girls they were,
fit helpmates either for shop or farm.” All of which was meant for me; but I
stuck to my platter and answered not.
In the evening Farmer Snowe came up, leading his daughters after
him, like fillies trimmed for a fair; and Uncle Ben, who had not seen them
on the night of his mishap (because word had been sent to stop them), was
mightily pleased and very pleasant, according to his town bred ways. The
damsels had seen good company, and soon got over their fear of his wealth,
and played him a number of merry pranks, which made our mother quite
jealous for Annie, who was always shy and diffident. However, when the
hot cup was done, and before the mulled wine was ready, we packed all the
maidens in the parlour and turned the key upon them; and then we drew
near to the kitchen fire to hear Uncle Ben's proposal. Farmer Snowe sat up
in the corner, caring little to hear about anything, but smoking slowly, and

nodding backward like a sheep-dog dreaming. Mother was in the settle, of
course, knitting hard, as usual; and Uncle Ben took to a three-legged stool,
as if all but that had been thieved from him. Howsoever, he kept his breath
from speech, giving privilege, as was due, to mother.
“Master Snowe, you are well assured,”
said mother, colouring like the furze as it
took the flame and fell over, “that our
kinsman here hath received rough harm on
his peaceful journey from Dulverton. The
times are bad, as we all know well, and there
is no sign of bettering them, and if I could
see our Lord the King I might say things to
move him! nevertheless, I have had so much
of my own account to vex for—”
“You are flying out of the subject,
Sarah,” said Uncle Ben, seeing tears in her
eyes, and tired of that matter.
“Zettle the pralimbinaries,” spoke Farmer Snowe, on appeal from us,
“virst zettle the pralimbinaries; and then us knows what be drivin' at.”
“Preliminaries be damned, sir,” cried Uncle Ben, losing his temper.
“What preliminaries were there when I was robbed; I should like to know?
Robbed in this parish as I can prove, to the eternal disgrace of Oare and the
scandal of all England. And I hold this parish to answer for it, sir; this
parish shall make it good, being a nest of foul thieves as it is; ay, farmers,
and yeomen, and all of you. I will beggar every man in this parish, if they
be not beggars already, ay, and sell your old church up before your eyes, but
what I will have back my tarlatan, time-piece, saddle, and dove-tailed nag.”
Mother looked at me, and I looked at Farmer Snowe, and we all were
sorry for Master Huckaback, putting our hands up one to another, that
nobody should browbeat him; because we all knew what our parish was,
and none the worse for strong language, however rich the man might be.
But Uncle Ben took it in a different way. He thought that we all were afraid
of him, and that Oare parish was but as Moab or Edom, for him to cast his
shoe over.
“Nephew Jack,” he cried, looking at me when I was thinking what to
say, and finding only emptiness, “you are a heavy lout, sir; a bumpkin, a

clodhopper; and I shall leave you nothing, unless it be my boots to grease.”
“Well, uncle,” I made answer, “I will grease your boots all the same for
that, so long as you be our guest, sir.”
Now, that answer, made without a thought, stood me for two thousand
pounds, as you shall see, by-and-by, perhaps.
“As for the parish,” my mother cried, being too hard set to contain
herself, “the parish can defend itself, and we may leave it to do so. But our
Jack is not like that, sir; and I will not have him spoken of. Leave him
indeed! Who wants you to do more than to leave him alone, sir; as he might
have done you the other night; and as no one else would have dared to do.
And after that, to think so meanly of me, and of my children!”
“Hoity, toity, Sarah! Your children, I suppose, are the same as other
people's.”
“That they are not; and never will be; and you ought to know it, Uncle
Reuben, if any one in the world ought. Other people's children!”
“Well, well!” Uncle Reuben answered, “I know very little of children;
except my little Ruth, and she is nothing wonderful.”
“I never said that my children were wonderful Uncle Ben; nor did I
ever think it. But as for being good—”
Here mother fetched out her handkerchief, being overcome by our
goodness; and I told her, with my hand to my mouth, not to notice him;
though he might be worth ten thousand times ten thousand pounds.
But Farmer Snowe came forward now, for he had some sense
sometimes; and he thought it was high time for him to say a word for the
parish.
“Maister Huckaback,” he began, pointing with his pipe at him, the end
that was done in sealing-wax, “tooching of what you was plaized to zay
'bout this here parish, and no oother, mind me no oother parish but thees, I
use the vreedom, zur, for to tell 'e, that thee be a laiar.”
Then Farmer Nicholas Snowe folded his arms across with the bowl of
his pipe on the upper one, and gave me a nod, and then one to mother, to
testify how he had done his duty, and recked not what might come of it.
However, he got little thanks from us; for the parish was nothing at all to
my mother, compared with her children's interests; and I thought it hard that
an uncle of mine, and an old man too, should be called a liar, by a visitor at

our fireplace. For we, in our rude part of the world, counted it one of the
worst disgraces that could befall a man, to receive the lie from any one. But
Uncle Ben, as it seems was used to it, in the way of trade, just as people of
fashion are, by a style of courtesy.
Therefore the old man only looked with pity at Farmer Nicholas; and
with a sort of sorrow too, reflecting how much he might have made in a
bargain with such a customer, so ignorant and hot-headed.
“Now let us bandy words no more,” said mother, very sweetly;
“nothing is easier than sharp words, except to wish them unspoken; as I do
many and many's the time, when I think of my good husband. But now let
us hear from Uncle Reuben what he would have us do to remove this
disgrace from amongst us, and to satisfy him of his goods.”
“I care not for my goods, woman,” Master Huckaback answered
grandly; “although they were of large value, about them I say nothing. But
what I demand is this, the punishment of those scoundrels.”
“Zober, man, zober!” cried Farmer Nicholas; “we be too naigh
Badgery 'ood, to spake like that of they Dooneses.”
“Pack of cowards!” said Uncle Reuben, looking first at the door,
however; “much chance I see of getting redress from the valour of this
Exmoor! And you, Master Snowe, the very man whom I looked to to raise
the country, and take the lead as churchwarden—why, my youngest
shopman would match his ell against you. Pack of cowards,” cried Uncle
Ben, rising and shaking his lappets at us; “don't pretend to answer me.
Shake you all off, that I do—nothing more to do with you!”
We knew it useless to answer him, and conveyed our knowledge to one
another, without anything to vex him. However, when the mulled wine was
come, and a good deal of it gone (the season being Epiphany), Uncle
Reuben began to think that he might have been too hard with us. Moreover,
he was beginning now to respect Farmer Nicholas bravely, because of the
way he had smoked his pipes, and the little noise made over them. And
Lizzie and Annie were doing their best—for now we had let the girls out—
to wake more lightsome uproar; also young Faith Snowe was toward to
keep the old men's cups aflow, and hansel them to their liking.
So at the close of our entertainment, when the girls were gone away to
fetch and light their lanthorns (over which they made rare noise, blowing
each the other's out for counting of the sparks to come), Master Huckaback

stood up, without much aid from the crock-saw, and looked at mother and
all of us.
“Let no one leave this place,” said he, “until I have said what I want to
say; for saving of ill-will among us; and growth of cheer and comfort. May
be I have carried things too far, even to the bounds of churlishness, and
beyond the bounds of good manners. I will not unsay one word I have said,
having never yet done so in my life; but I would alter the manner of it, and
set it forth in this light. If you folks upon Exmoor here are loath and wary at
fighting, yet you are brave at better stuff; the best and kindest I ever knew,
in the matter of feeding.”
Here he sat down with tears in his eyes, and called for a little mulled
bastard. All the maids, who were now come back, raced to get it for him,
but Annie of course was foremost. And herein ended the expedition, a
perilous and a great one, against the Doones of Bagworthy; an enterprise
over which we had all talked plainly more than was good for us. For my
part, I slept well that night, feeling myself at home again, now that the
fighting was put aside, and the fear of it turned to the comfort of talking
what we would have done.

CHAPTER XV
QUO WARRANTO?

On the following day Master
Huckaback, with some show of mystery,
demanded from my mother an escort into a
dangerous part of the world, to which his
business compelled him. My mother made
answer to this that he was kindly welcome to
take our John Fry with him; at which the
good clothier laughed, and said that John
was nothing like big enough, but another
John must serve his turn, not only for his
size, but because if he were carried away, no
stone would be left unturned upon Exmoor,
until he should be brought back again.
Hereupon my mother grew very pale, and
found fifty reasons against my going, each
of them weightier than the true one, as Eliza (who was jealous of me)
managed to whisper to Annie. On the other hand, I was quite resolved
(directly the thing was mentioned) to see Uncle Reuben through with it; and
it added much to my self-esteem to be the guard of so rich a man. Therefore
I soon persuaded mother, with her head upon my breast, to let me go and
trust in God; and after that I was greatly vexed to find that this dangerous
enterprise was nothing more than a visit to the Baron de Whichehalse, to lay
an information, and sue a warrant against the Doones, and a posse to
execute it.
Stupid as I always have been, and must ever be no doubt, I could well
have told Uncle Reuben that his journey was no wiser than that of the men
of Gotham; that he never would get from Hugh de Whichehalse a warrant
against the Doones; moreover, that if he did get one, his own wig would be
singed with it. But for divers reasons I held my peace, partly from youth

and modesty, partly from desire to see whatever please God I should see,
and partly from other causes.
We rode by way of Brendon town, Illford Bridge, and Babbrook, to
avoid the great hill above Lynmouth; and the day being fine and clear again,
I laughed in my sleeve at Uncle Reuben for all his fine precautions. When
we arrived at Ley Manor, we were shown very civilly into the hall, and
refreshed with good ale and collared head, and the back of a Christmas
pudding. I had never been under so fine a roof (unless it were of a church)
before; and it pleased me greatly to be so kindly entreated by high-born
folk. But Uncle Reuben was vexed a little at being set down side by side
with a man in a very small way of trade, who was come upon some
business there, and who made bold to drink his health after finishing their
horns of ale.
“Sir,” said Uncle Ben, looking at him, “my health would fare much
better, if you would pay me three pounds and twelve shillings, which you
have owed me these five years back; and now we are met at the Justice's,
the opportunity is good, sir.”
After that, we were called to the Justice-room, where the Baron
himself was sitting with Colonel Harding, another Justiciary of the King's
peace, to help him. I had seen the Baron de Whichehalse before, and was
not at all afraid of him, having been at school with his son as he knew, and
it made him very kind to me. And indeed he was kind to everybody, and all
our people spoke well of him; and so much the more because we knew that
the house was in decadence. For the first De Whichehalse had come from
Holland, where he had been a great nobleman, some hundred and fifty years
agone. Being persecuted for his religion, when the Spanish power was
everything, he fled to England with all he could save, and bought large
estates in Devonshire. Since then his descendants had intermarried with
ancient county families, Cottwells, and Marwoods, and Walronds, and
Welses of Pylton, and Chichesters of Hall; and several of the ladies brought
them large increase of property. And so about fifty years before the time of
which I am writing, there were few names in the West of England thought
more of than De Whichehalse. But now they had lost a great deal of land,
and therefore of that which goes with land, as surely as fame belongs to
earth—I mean big reputation. How they had lost it, none could tell; except
that as the first descendants had a manner of amassing, so the later ones

were gifted with a power of scattering. Whether this came of good
Devonshire blood opening the sluice of Low Country veins, is beyond both
my province and my power to inquire. Anyhow, all people loved this last
strain of De Whichehalse far more than the name had been liked a hundred
years agone.
Hugh de Whichehalse, a white-haired man, of
very noble presence, with friendly blue eyes and a
sweet smooth forehead, and aquiline nose quite
beautiful (as you might expect in a lady of birth), and
thin lips curving delicately, this gentleman rose as we
entered the room; while Colonel Harding turned on his
chair, and struck one spur against the other. I am sure
that, without knowing aught of either, we must have
reverenced more of the two the one who showed
respect to us. And yet nine gentleman out of ten make
this dull mistake when dealing with the class below them!
Uncle Reuben made his very best scrape, and then walked up to the
table, trying to look as if he did not know himself to be wealthier than both
the gentlemen put together. Of course he was no stranger to them, any more
than I was; and, as it proved afterwards, Colonel Harding owed him a lump
of money, upon very good security. Of him Uncle Reuben took no notice,
but addressed himself to De Whichehalse.
The Baron smiled very gently, so soon as he learned the cause of this
visit, and then he replied quite reasonably.
“A warrant against the Doones, Master Huckaback. Which of the
Doones, so please you; and the Christian names, what be they?”
“My lord, I am not their godfather; and most like they never had any.
But we all know old Sir Ensor's name, so that may be no obstacle.”
“Sir Ensor Doone and his sons—so be it. How many sons, Master
Huckaback, and what is the name of each one?”
“How can I tell you, my lord, even if I had known them all as well as
my own shop-boys? Nevertheless there were seven of them, and that should
be no obstacle.”
“A warrant against Sir Ensor Doone, and seven sons of Sir Ensor
Doone, Christian names unknown, and doubted if they have any. So far so

good Master Huckaback. I have it all down in writing. Sir Ensor himself
was there, of course, as you have given in evidence—”
“No, no, my lord, I never said that: I never said—”
“If he can prove that he was not there, you may be indicted for perjury.
But as for those seven sons of his, of course you can swear that they were
his sons and not his nephews, or grandchildren, or even no Doones at all?”
“My lord, I can swear that they were Doones. Moreover, I can pay for
any mistake I make. Therein need be no obstacle.”
“Oh, yes, he can pay; he can pay well enough,” said Colonel Harding
shortly.
“I am heartily glad to hear it,” replied the Baron pleasantly; “for it
proves after all that this robbery (if robbery there has been) was not so very
ruinous. Sometimes people think they are robbed, and then it is very sweet
afterwards to find that they have not been so; for it adds to their joy in their
property. Now, are you quite convinced, good sir, that these people (if there
were any) stole, or took, or even borrowed anything at all from you?”
“My lord, do you think that I was drunk?”
“Not for a moment, Master Huckaback. Although excuse might be
made for you at this time of the year. But how did you know that your
visitors were of this particular family?”
“Because it could be nobody else. Because, in spite of the fog—”
“Fog!” cried Colonel Harding sharply.
“Fog!” said the Baron, with emphasis. “Ah, that explains the whole
affair. To be sure, now I remember, the weather has been too thick for a man
to see the head of his own horse. The Doones (if still there be any Doones)
could never have come abroad; that is as sure as simony. Master
Huckaback, for your good sake, I am heartily glad that this charge has
miscarried. I thoroughly understand it now. The fog explains the whole of
it.”
“Go back, my good fellow,” said Colonel Harding; “and if the day is
clear enough, you will find all your things where you left them. I know,
from my own experience, what it is to be caught in an Exmoor fog.”
Uncle Reuben, by this time, was so put out, that he hardly knew what
he was saying.

“My lord, Sir Colonel, is this your justice! If I go to London myself for
it, the King shall know how his commission—how a man may be robbed,
and the justices prove that he ought to be hanged at back of it; that in his
good shire of Somerset—”
“Your pardon a moment, good sir,” De Whichehalse interrupted him;
“but I was about (having heard your case) to mention what need be an
obstacle, and, I fear, would prove a fatal one, even if satisfactory proof were
afforded of a felony. The mal-feasance (if any) was laid in Somerset; but
we, two humble servants of His Majesty, are in commission of his peace for
the county of Devon only, and therefore could never deal with it.”
“And why, in the name of God,” cried Uncle Reuben now carried at
last fairly beyond himself, “why could you not say as much at first, and
save me all this waste of time and worry of my temper? Gentlemen, you are
all in league; all of you stick together. You think it fair sport for an honest
trader, who makes no shams as you do, to be robbed and wellnigh
murdered, so long as they who did it won the high birthright of felony. If a
poor sheep stealer, to save his children from dying of starvation, had dared
to look at a two-month lamb, he would swing on the Manor gallows, and all
of you cry 'Good riddance!' But now, because good birth and bad manners
—” Here poor Uncle Ben, not being so strong as before the Doones had
played with him, began to foam at the mouth a little, and his tongue went
into the hollow where his short grey whiskers were.
I forget how we came out of it, only I was greatly shocked at bearding
of the gentry so, and mother scarce could see her way, when I told her all
about it. “Depend upon it you were wrong, John,” was all I could get out of
her; though what had I done but listen, and touch my forelock, when called
upon. “John, you may take my word for it, you have not done as you should
have done. Your father would have been shocked to think of going to Baron
de Whichehalse, and in his own house insulting him! And yet it was very
brave of you John. Just like you, all over. And (as none of the men are here,
dear John) I am proud of you for doing it.”
All throughout the homeward road, Uncle Ben had been very silent,
feeling much displeased with himself and still more so with other people.
But before he went to bed that night, he just said to me, “Nephew Jack, you
have not behaved so badly as the rest to me. And because you have no gift

of talking, I think that I may trust you. Now, mark my words, this villain job
shall not have ending here. I have another card to play.”
“You mean, sir, I suppose, that you will go to the justices of this shire,
Squire Maunder, or Sir Richard Blewitt, or—”
“Oaf, I mean nothing of the sort; they would only make a laughing-
stock, as those Devonshire people did, of me. No, I will go to the King
himself, or a man who is bigger than the King, and to whom I have ready
access. I will not tell thee his name at present, only if thou art brought
before him, never wilt thou forget it.” That was true enough, by the bye, as I
discovered afterwards, for the man he meant was Judge Jeffreys.
“And when are you likely to see him, sir?”
“Maybe in the spring, maybe not until summer, for I cannot go to
London on purpose, but when my business takes me there. Only remember
my words, Jack, and when you see the man I mean, look straight at him,
and tell no lie. He will make some of your zany squires shake in their shoes,
I reckon. Now, I have been in this lonely hole far longer than I intended, by
reason of this outrage; yet I will stay here one day more upon a certain
condition.”
“Upon what condition, Uncle Ben? I grieve that you find it so lonely.
We will have Farmer Nicholas up again, and the singers, and—”
“The fashionable milkmaids. I thank you, let me be. The wenches are
too loud for me. Your Nanny is enough. Nanny is a good child, and she
shall come and visit me.” Uncle Reuben would always call her “Nanny”; he
said that “Annie” was too fine and Frenchified for us. “But my condition is
this, Jack—that you shall guide me to-morrow, without a word to any one,
to a place where I may well descry the dwelling of these scoundrel Doones,
and learn the best way to get at them, when the time shall come. Can you do
this for me? I will pay you well, boy.”
I promised very readily to do my best to serve him, but, of course,
would take no money for it, not being so poor as that came to. Accordingly,
on the day following, I managed to set the men at work on the other side of
the farm, especially that inquisitive and busybody John Fry, who would pry
out almost anything for the pleasure of telling his wife; and then, with
Uncle Reuben mounted on my ancient Peggy, I made foot for the westward,
directly after breakfast. Uncle Ben refused to go unless I would take a
loaded gun, and indeed it was always wise to do so in those days of

turbulence; and none the less because of late more than usual of our sheep
had left their skins behind them. This, as I need hardly say, was not to be
charged to the appetite of the Doones, for they always said that they were
not butchers (although upon that subject might well be two opinions); and
their practice was to make the shepherds kill and skin, and quarter for them,
and sometimes carry to the Doone-gate the prime among the fatlings, for
fear of any bruising, which spoils the look at table. But the worst of it was
that ignorant folk, unaware of their fastidiousness, scored to them the sheep
they lost by lower-born marauders, and so were afraid to speak of it: and the
issue of this error was that a farmer, with five or six hundred sheep, could
never command, on his wedding-day, a prime saddle of mutton for dinner.
To return now to my Uncle Ben—and indeed he would not let me go
more than three land-yards from him—there was very little said between us
along the lane and across the hill, although the day was pleasant. I could see
that he was half amiss with his mind about the business, and not so full of
security as an elderly man should keep himself. Therefore, out I spake, and
said,—
“Uncle Reuben, have no fear. I know every inch of the ground, sir; and
there is no danger nigh us.”
“Fear, boy! Who ever thought of fear? 'Tis the last thing would come
across me. Pretty things those primroses.”
At once I thought of Lorna Doone, the little maid of six years back,
and how my fancy went with her. Could Lorna ever think of me? Was I not
a lout gone by, only fit for loach-sticking? Had I ever seen a face fit to think
of near her? The sudden flash, the quickness, the bright desire to know one's
heart, and not withhold her own from it, the soft withdrawal of rich eyes,
the longing to love somebody, anybody, anything, not imbrued with
wickedness—
My uncle interrupted me, misliking so much silence now, with the
naked woods falling over us. For we were come to Bagworthy forest, the
blackest and the loneliest place of all that keep the sun out. Even now, in
winter-time, with most of the wood unriddled, and the rest of it pinched
brown, it hung around us like a cloak containing little comfort. I kept quite
close to Peggy's head, and Peggy kept quite close to me, and pricked her
ears at everything. However, we saw nothing there, except a few old owls
and hawks, and a magpie sitting all alone, until we came to the bank of the

hill, where the pony could not climb it. Uncle Ben was very loath to get off,
because the pony seemed company, and he thought he could gallop away on
her, if the worst came to the worst, but I persuaded him that now he must go
to the end of it. Therefore he made Peggy fast, in a place where we could
find her, and speaking cheerfully as if there was nothing to be afraid of, he
took his staff, and I my gun, to climb the thick ascent.
There was now no path of any kind; which added to our courage all it
lessened of our comfort, because it proved that the robbers were not in the
habit of passing there. And we knew that we could not go astray, so long as
we breasted the hill before us; inasmuch as it formed the rampart, or side-
fence of Glen Doone. But in truth I used the right word there for the manner
of our ascent, for the ground came forth so steep against us, and withal so
woody, that to make any way we must throw ourselves forward, and labour
as at a breast-plough. Rough and loamy rungs of oak-root bulged here and
there above our heads; briers needs must speak with us, using more of tooth
than tongue; and sometimes bulks of rugged stone, like great sheep, stood
across us. At last, though very loath to do it, I was forced to leave my gun
behind, because I required one hand to drag myself up the difficulty, and
one to help Uncle Reuben. And so at last we gained the top, and looked
forth the edge of the forest, where the ground was very stony and like the
crest of a quarry; and no more trees between us and the brink of cliff below,
three hundred yards below it might be, all strong slope and gliddery. And
now for the first time I was amazed at the appearance of the Doones's
stronghold, and understood its nature. For when I had been even in the
valley, and climbed the cliffs to escape from it, about seven years agone, I
was no more than a stripling boy, noting little, as boys do, except for their
present purpose, and even that soon done with. But now, what with the
fame of the Doones, and my own recollections, and Uncle Ben's insistence,
all my attention was called forth, and the end was simple astonishment.
The chine of highland, whereon we stood, curved to the right and left
of us, keeping about the same elevation, and crowned with trees and
brushwood. At about half a mile in front of us, but looking as if we could
throw a stone to strike any man upon it, another crest just like our own
bowed around to meet it; but failed by reason of two narrow clefts of which
we could only see the brink. One of these clefts was the Doone-gate, with a
portcullis of rock above it, and the other was the chasm by which I had once
made entrance. Betwixt them, where the hills fell back, as in a perfect oval,

traversed by the winding water, lay a bright green valley, rimmed with sheer
black rock, and seeming to have sunken bodily from the bleak rough
heights above. It looked as if no frost could enter neither wind go ruffling;
only spring, and hope, and comfort, breathe to one another. Even now the
rays of sunshine dwelt and fell back on one another, whenever the clouds
lifted; and the pale blue glimpse of the growing day seemed to find young
encouragement.
But for all that, Uncle Reuben was none the worse nor better. He
looked down into Glen Doone first, and sniffed as if he were smelling it,
like a sample of goods from a wholesale house; and then he looked at the
hills over yonder, and then he stared at me.
“See what a pack of fools they be?”
“Of course I do, Uncle Ben. 'All rogues are fools,' was my first copy,
beginning of the alphabet.”
“Pack of stuff lad. Though true enough, and very good for young
people. But see you not how this great Doone valley may be taken in half
an hour?”
“Yes, to be sure I do, uncle; if they like to give it up, I mean.”
“Three culverins on yonder hill, and three on the top of this one, and
we have them under a pestle. Ah, I have seen the wars, my lad, from
Keinton up to Naseby; and I might have been a general now, if they had
taken my advice—”
But I was not attending to him, being drawn away on a sudden by a
sight which never struck the sharp eyes of our General. For I had long ago
descried that little opening in the cliff through which I made my exit, as
before related, on the other side of the valley. No bigger than a rabbit-hole it
seemed from where we stood; and yet of all the scene before me, that (from
my remembrance perhaps) had the most attraction. Now gazing at it with
full thought of all that it had cost me, I saw a little figure come, and pause,
and pass into it. Something very light and white, nimble, smooth, and
elegant, gone almost before I knew that any one had been there. And yet my
heart came to my ribs, and all my blood was in my face, and pride within
me fought with shame, and vanity with self-contempt; for though seven
years were gone, and I from my boyhood come to manhood, and all must
have forgotten me, and I had half-forgotten; at that moment, once for all, I

felt that I was face to face with fate (however poor it might be), weal or
woe, in Lorna Doone.

CHAPTER XVI
LORNA GROWING FORMIDABLE

Having reconnoitred thus the position
of the enemy, Master Huckaback, on the
homeward road, cross-examined me in a
manner not at all desirable. For he had noted
my confusion and eager gaze at something
unseen by him in the valley, and thereupon
he made up his mind to know everything
about it. In this, however, he partly failed;
for although I was no hand at fence, and
would not tell him a falsehood, I managed
so to hold my peace that he put himself upon
the wrong track, and continued thereon with
many vaunts of his shrewdness and
experience, and some chuckles at my
simplicity. Thus much however, he learned aright, that I had been in the
Doone valley several years before, and might be brought upon strong
inducement to venture there again. But as to the mode of my getting in, the
things I saw, and my thoughts upon them, he not only failed to learn the
truth, but certified himself into an obstinacy of error, from which no after-
knowledge was able to deliver him. And this he did, not only because I
happened to say very little, but forasmuch as he disbelieved half of the truth
I told him, through his own too great sagacity.
Upon one point, however, he succeeded more easily than he expected,
viz. in making me promise to visit the place again, as soon as occasion
offered, and to hold my own counsel about it. But I could not help smiling
at one thing, that according to his point of view my own counsel meant my
own and Master Reuben Huckaback's.
Now he being gone, as he went next day, to his favourite town of
Dulverton, and leaving behind him shadowy promise of the mountains he
would do for me, my spirit began to burn and pant for something to go on

with; and nothing showed a braver hope of movement and adventure than a
lonely visit to Glen Doone, by way of the perilous passage discovered in
my boyhood. Therefore I waited for nothing more than the slow arrival of
new small-clothes made by a good tailor at Porlock, for I was wishful to
look my best; and when they were come and approved, I started, regardless
of the expense, and forgetting (like a fool) how badly they would take the
water.
What with urging of the tailor, and my own misgivings, the time was
now come round again to the high-day of St. Valentine, when all our maids
were full of lovers, and all the lads looked foolish. And none of them more
sheepish or innocent than I myself, albeit twenty-one years old, and not
afraid of men much, but terrified of women, at least, if they were comely.
And what of all things scared me most was the thought of my own size, and
knowledge of my strength, which came like knots upon me daily. In honest
truth I tell this thing, (which often since hath puzzled me, when I came to
mix with men more), I was to that degree ashamed of my thickness and my
stature, in the presence of a woman, that I would not put a trunk of wood on
the fire in the kitchen, but let Annie scold me well, with a smile to follow,
and with her own plump hands lift up a little log, and fuel it. Many a time I
longed to be no bigger than John Fry was; whom now (when insolent) I
took with my left hand by the waist-stuff, and set him on my hat, and gave
him little chance to tread it; until he spoke of his family, and requested to
come down again.

Now taking for good omen this, that I was a seven-year Valentine,
though much too big for a Cupidon, I chose a seven-foot staff of ash, and
fixed a loach-fork in it, to look as I had looked before; and leaving word
upon matters of business, out of the back door I went, and so through the
little orchard, and down the brawling Lynn-brook. Not being now so much
afraid, I struck across the thicket land between the meeting waters, and

came upon the Bagworthy stream near the great black whirlpool. Nothing
amazed me so much as to find how shallow the stream now looked to me,
although the pool was still as black and greedy as it used to be. And still the
great rocky slide was dark and difficult to climb; though the water, which
once had taken my knees, was satisfied now with my ankles. After some
labour, I reached the top; and halted to look about me well, before trusting
to broad daylight.
The winter (as I said before) had been a very mild one; and now the
spring was toward so that bank and bush were touched with it. The valley
into which I gazed was fair with early promise, having shelter from the
wind and taking all the sunshine. The willow-bushes over the stream hung
as if they were angling with tasseled floats of gold and silver, bursting like a
bean-pod. Between them came the water laughing, like a maid at her own
dancing, and spread with that young blue which never lives beyond the
April. And on either bank, the meadow ruffled as the breeze came by,
opening (through new tuft, of green) daisy-bud or celandine, or a shy
glimpse now and then of the love-lorn primrose.

Though I am so blank of wit, or perhaps for that same reason, these
little things come and dwell with me, and I am happy about them, and long
for nothing better. I feel with every blade of grass, as if it had a history; and
make a child of every bud as though it knew and loved me. And being so,
they seem to tell me of my own delusions, how I am no more than they,
except in self-importance.

While I was forgetting much of many things that harm one, and letting
of my thoughts go wild to sounds and sights of nature, a sweeter note than
thrush or ouzel ever wooed a mate in, floated on the valley breeze at the
quiet turn of sundown. The words were of an ancient song, fit to laugh or
cry at.

“Love, an if There Be One,
Come My Love to Be,
My Love is for the One
Loving Unto Me.

Not for me the show, love,
Of a gilded bliss;
Only thou must know, love,
What my value is.

If in all the earth, love,
Thou hast none but me,
This shall be my worth, love:
To be cheap to thee.

But, if so thou ever
Strivest to be free,
'Twill be my endeavour
To be dear to thee.

So shall I have plea, love,

Is thy heart and breath
Clinging still to thee, love,
In the doom of death.”

All this I took in with great eagerness, not for the sake of the meaning
(which is no doubt an allegory), but for the power and richness, and
softness of the singing, which seemed to me better than we ever had even in
Oare church. But all the time I kept myself in a black niche of the rock,
where the fall of the water began, lest the sweet singer (espying me) should
be alarmed, and flee away. But presently I ventured to look forth where a
bush was; and then I beheld the loveliest sight—one glimpse of which was
enough to make me kneel in the coldest water.
By the side of the stream she was coming to me, even among the
primroses, as if she loved them all; and every flower looked the brighter, as
her eyes were on them, I could not see what her face was, my heart so
awoke and trembled; only that her hair was flowing from a wreath of white
violets, and the grace of her coming was like the appearance of the first
wind-flower. The pale gleam over the western cliffs threw a shadow of light
behind her, as if the sun were lingering. Never do I see that light from the
closing of the west, even in these my aged days, without thinking of her. Ah
me, if it comes to that, what do I see of earth or heaven, without thinking of
her?
The tremulous thrill of her song was hanging on her open lips; and she
glanced around, as if the birds were accustomed to make answer. To me it
was a thing of terror to behold such beauty, and feel myself the while to be
so very low and common. But scarcely knowing what I did, as if a rope
were drawing me, I came from the dark mouth of the chasm; and stood,
afraid to look at her.
She was turning to fly, not knowing me, and frightened, perhaps, at my
stature, when I fell on the grass (as I fell before her seven years agone that
day), and I just said, “Lorna Doone!”
She knew me at once, from my manner and ways, and a smile broke
through her trembling, as sunshine comes through aspen-leaves; and being
so clever, she saw, of course, that she needed not to fear me.
“Oh, indeed,” she cried, with a feint of anger (because she had shown
her cowardice, and yet in her heart she was laughing); “oh, if you please,

who are you, sir, and how do you know my name?”
“I am John Ridd,” I answered; “the boy who gave you those beautiful
fish, when you were only a little thing, seven years ago to-day.”
“Yes, the poor boy who was frightened so, and obliged to hide here in
the water.”
“And do you remember how kind you were, and saved my life by your
quickness, and went away riding upon a great man's shoulder, as if you had
never seen me, and yet looked back through the willow-trees?”
“Oh, yes, I remember everything; because it was so rare to see any
except—I mean because I happen to remember. But you seem not to
remember, sir, how perilous this place is.”
For she had kept her eyes upon me; large eyes of a softness, a
brightness, and a dignity which made me feel as if I must for ever love and
yet for ever know myself unworthy. Unless themselves should fill with
love, which is the spring of all things. And so I could not answer her, but
was overcome with thinking and feeling and confusion. Neither could I
look again; only waited for the melody which made every word like a poem
to me, the melody of her voice. But she had not the least idea of what was
going on with me, any more than I myself had.
“I think, Master Ridd, you cannot know,” she said, with her eyes taken
from me, “what the dangers of this place are, and the nature of the people.”
“Yes, I know enough of that; and I am frightened greatly, all the time,
when I do not look at you.”
She was too young to answer me in the style some maidens would
have used; the manner, I mean, which now we call from a foreign word
“coquettish.” And more than that, she was trembling from real fear of
violence, lest strong hands might be laid on me, and a miserable end of it.
And to tell the truth, I grew afraid; perhaps from a kind of sympathy, and
because I knew that evil comes more readily than good to us.
Therefore, without more ado, or taking any advantage—although I
would have been glad at heart, if needs had been, to kiss her (without any
thought of rudeness)—it struck me that I had better go, and have no more to
say to her until next time of coming. So would she look the more for me
and think the more about me, and not grow weary of my words and the
want of change there is in me. For, of course, I knew what a churl I was

compared to her birth and appearance; but meanwhile I might improve
myself and learn a musical instrument. “The wind hath a draw after flying
straw” is a saying we have in Devonshire, made, peradventure, by
somebody who had seen the ways of women.
“Mistress Lorna, I will depart”—mark you, I thought that a powerful
word—“in fear of causing disquiet. If any rogue shot me it would grieve
you; I make bold to say it, and it would be the death of mother. Few
mothers have such a son as me. Try to think of me now and then, and I will
bring you some new-laid eggs, for our young blue hen is beginning.”
“I thank you heartily,” said Lorna; “but you need not come to see me.
You can put them in my little bower, where I am almost always—I mean
whither daily I repair to read and to be away from them.”
“Only show me where it is. Thrice a day I will come and stop—”
“Nay, Master Ridd, I would never show thee—never, because of peril
—only that so happens it thou hast found the way already.”
And she smiled with a light that made me care to cry out for no other
way, except to her dear heart. But only to myself I cried for anything at all,
having enough of man in me to be bashful with young maidens. So I
touched her white hand softly when she gave it to me, and (fancying that
she had sighed) was touched at heart about it, and resolved to yield her all
my goods, although my mother was living; and then grew angry with
myself (for a mile or more of walking) to think she would condescend so;
and then, for the rest of the homeward road, was mad with every man in the
world who would dare to think of having her.

CHAPTER XVII
JOHN IS BEWITCHED

To forget one's luck of life, to forget the cark of
care and withering of young fingers; not to feel, or
not be moved by, all the change of thought and
heart, from large young heat to the sinewy lines and
dry bones of old age—this is what I have to do ere
ever I can make you know (even as a dream is
known) how I loved my Lorna. I myself can never
know; never can conceive, or treat it as a thing of
reason, never can behold myself dwelling in the
midst of it, and think that this was I; neither can I
wander far from perpetual thought of it. Perhaps I
have two farrows of pigs ready for the chapman;
perhaps I have ten stones of wool waiting for the factor. It is all the same. I
look at both, and what I say to myself is this: “Which would Lorna choose
of them?” Of course, I am a fool for this; any man may call me so, and I
will not quarrel with him, unless he guess my secret. Of course, I fetch my
wit, if it be worth the fetching, back again to business. But there my heart is
and must be; and all who like to try can cheat me, except upon parish
matters.
That week I could do little more than dream and dream and rove about,
seeking by perpetual change to find the way back to myself. I cared not for
the people round me, neither took delight in victuals; but made believe to
eat and drink and blushed at any questions. And being called the master
now, head-farmer, and chief yeoman, it irked me much that any one should
take advantage of me; yet everybody did so as soon as ever it was known
that my wits were gone moon-raking. For that was the way they looked at
it, not being able to comprehend the greatness and the loftiness. Neither do I
blame them much; for the wisest thing is to laugh at people when we cannot
understand them. I, for my part, took no notice; but in my heart despised
them as beings of a lesser nature, who never had seen Lorna. Yet I was

vexed, and rubbed myself, when John Fry spread all over the farm, and
even at the shoeing forge, that a mad dog had come and bitten me, from the
other side of Mallond.
This seems little to me now; and so it might to any one; but, at the
time, it worked me up to a fever of indignity. To make a mad dog of Lorna,
to compare all my imaginings (which were strange, I do assure you—the
faculty not being apt to work), to count the raising of my soul no more than
hydrophobia! All this acted on me so, that I gave John Fry the soundest
threshing that ever a sheaf of good corn deserved, or a bundle of tares was
blessed with. Afterwards he went home, too tired to tell his wife the
meaning of it; but it proved of service to both of them, and an example for
their children.
Now the climate of this country is—so far as I can make of it—to
throw no man into extremes; and if he throw himself so far, to pluck him
back by change of weather and the need of looking after things. Lest we
should be like the Southerns, for whom the sky does everything, and men
sit under a wall and watch both food and fruit come beckoning. Their sky is
a mother to them; but ours a good stepmother to us—fearing to hurt by
indulgence, and knowing that severity and change of mood are wholesome.
The spring being now too forward, a check to it was needful; and in
the early part of March there came a change of weather. All the young
growth was arrested by a dry wind from the east, which made both face and
fingers burn when a man was doing ditching. The lilacs and the woodbines,
just crowding forth in little tufts, close kernelling their blossom, were
ruffled back, like a sleeve turned up, and nicked with brown at the corners.
In the hedges any man, unless his eyes were very dull, could see the
mischief doing. The russet of the young elm-bloom was fain to be in its
scale again; but having pushed forth, there must be, and turn to a tawny
colour. The hangers of the hazel, too, having shed their dust to make the
nuts, did not spread their little combs and dry them, as they ought to do; but
shrivelled at the base and fell, as if a knife had cut them. And more than all
to notice was (at least about the hedges) the shuddering of everything and
the shivering sound among them toward the feeble sun; such as we make to
a poor fireplace when several doors are open. Sometimes I put my face to
warm against the soft, rough maple-stem, which feels like the foot of a red
deer; but the pitiless east wind came through all, and took and shook the

caved hedge aback till its knees were knocking together, and nothing could
be shelter. Then would any one having blood, and trying to keep at home
with it, run to a sturdy tree and hope to eat his food behind it, and look for a
little sun to come and warm his feet in the shelter. And if it did he might
strike his breast, and try to think he was warmer.
But when a man came home at night, after long day's labour, knowing
that the days increased, and so his care should multiply; still he found
enough of light to show him what the day had done against him in his
garden. Every ridge of new-turned earth looked like an old man's muscles,
honeycombed, and standing out void of spring, and powdery. Every plant
that had rejoiced in passing such a winter now was cowering, turned away,
unfit to meet the consequence. Flowing sap had stopped its course; fluted
lines showed want of food, and if you pinched the topmost spray, there was
no rebound or firmness.
We think a good deal, in a quiet way, when people ask us about them
—of some fine, upstanding pear-trees, grafted by my grandfather, who had
been very greatly respected. And he got those grafts by sheltering a poor
Italian soldier, in the time of James the First, a man who never could do
enough to show his grateful memories. How he came to our place is a very
difficult story, which I never understood rightly, having heard it from my
mother. At any rate, there the pear-trees were, and there they are to this very
day; and I wish every one could taste their fruit, old as they are, and rugged.
Now these fine trees had taken advantage of the west winds, and the
moisture, and the promise of the spring time, so as to fill the tips of the
spray-wood and the rowels all up the branches with a crowd of eager
blossom. Not that they were yet in bloom, nor even showing whiteness,
only that some of the cones were opening at the side of the cap which
pinched them; and there you might count perhaps, a dozen nobs, like very
little buttons, but grooved, and lined, and huddling close, to make room for
one another. And among these buds were gray-green blades, scarce bigger
than a hair almost, yet curving so as if their purpose was to shield the
blossom.
Other of the spur-points, standing on the older wood where the sap was
not so eager, had not burst their tunic yet, but were flayed and flaked with
light, casting off the husk of brown in three-cornered patches, as I have seen

a Scotchman's plaid, or as his legs shows through it. These buds, at a
distance, looked as if the sky had been raining cream upon them.
Now all this fair delight to the eyes, and good promise to the palate,
was marred and baffled by the wind and cutting of the night-frosts. The
opening cones were struck with brown, in between the button buds, and on
the scapes that shielded them; while the foot part of the cover hung like
rags, peeled back, and quivering. And there the little stalk of each, which
might have been a pear, God willing, had a ring around its base, and sought
a chance to drop and die. The others which had not opened comb, but only
prepared to do it, were a little better off, but still very brown and unkid, and
shrivelling in doubt of health, and neither peart nor lusty.
Now this I have not told because I know the way to do it, for that I do
not, neither yet have seen a man who did know. It is wonderful how we
look at things, and never think to notice them; and I am as bad as anybody,
unless the thing to be observed is a dog, or a horse, or a maiden. And the
last of those three I look at, somehow, without knowing that I take notice,
and greatly afraid to do it, only I knew afterwards (when the time of life
was in me), not indeed, what the maiden was like, but how she differed
from others.
Yet I have spoken about the spring, and the
failure of fair promise, because I took it to my heart
as token of what would come to me in the budding
of my years and hope. And even then, being much
possessed, and full of a foolish melancholy, I felt a
sad delight at being doomed to blight and
loneliness; not but that I managed still (when
mother was urgent upon me) to eat my share of
victuals, and cuff a man for laziness, and see that a
ploughshare made no leaps, and sleep of a night
without dreaming. And my mother half-believing, in
her fondness and affection, that what the parish said
was true about a mad dog having bitten me, and yet
arguing that it must be false (because God would
have prevented him), my mother gave me little rest,
when I was in the room with her. Not that she worried me with questions,
nor openly regarded me with any unusual meaning, but that I knew she was

watching slyly whenever I took a spoon up; and every hour or so she
managed to place a pan of water by me, quite as if by accident, and
sometimes even to spill a little upon my shoe or coat-sleeve. But Betty
Muxworthy was worst; for, having no fear about my health, she made a
villainous joke of it, and used to rush into the kitchen, barking like a dog,
and panting, exclaiming that I had bitten her, and justice she would have on
me, if it cost her a twelvemonth's wages. And she always took care to do
this thing just when I had crossed my legs in the corner after supper, and
leaned my head against the oven, to begin to think of Lorna.
However, in all things there is comfort, if we do not look too hard for
it; and now I had much satisfaction, in my uncouth state, from labouring, by
the hour together, at the hedging and the ditching, meeting the bitter wind
face to face, feeling my strength increase, and hoping that some one would
be proud of it. In the rustling rush of every gust, in the graceful bend of
every tree, even in the “lords and ladies,” clumped in the scoops of the
hedgerow, and most of all in the soft primrose, wrung by the wind, but
stealing back, and smiling when the wrath was passed—in all of these, and
many others there was aching ecstasy, delicious pang of Lorna.
But however cold the weather was, and however hard the wind blew,
one thing (more than all the rest) worried and perplexed me. This was, that I
could not settle, turn and twist as I might, how soon I ought to go again
upon a visit to Glen Doone. For I liked not at all the falseness of it (albeit
against murderers), the creeping out of sight, and hiding, and feeling as a
spy might. And even more than this. I feared how Lorna might regard it;
whether I might seem to her a prone and blunt intruder, a country youth not
skilled in manners, as among the quality, even when they rob us. For I was
not sure myself, but that it might be very bad manners to go again too early
without an invitation; and my hands and face were chapped so badly by the
bitter wind, that Lorna might count them unsightly things, and wish to see
no more of them.
However, I could not bring myself to consult any one upon this point,
at least in our own neighbourhood, nor even to speak of it near home. But
the east wind holding through the month, my hands and face growing worse
and worse, and it having occurred to me by this time that possibly Lorna
might have chaps, if she came abroad at all, and so might like to talk about

them and show her little hands to me, I resolved to take another opinion, so
far as might be upon this matter, without disclosing the circumstances.
Now the wisest person in all our parts was reckoned to be a certain
wise woman, well known all over Exmoor by the name of Mother
Melldrum. Her real name was Maple Durham, as I learned long afterwards;
and she came of an ancient family, but neither of Devon nor Somerset.
Nevertheless she was quite at home with our proper modes of divination;
and knowing that we liked them best—as each man does his own religion—
she would always practise them for the people of the country. And all the
while, she would let us know that she kept a higher and nobler mode for
those who looked down upon this one, not having been bred and born to it.
Mother Melldrum had two houses, or rather she had none at all, but
two homes wherein to find her, according to the time of year. In summer
she lived in a pleasant cave, facing the cool side of the hill, far inland near
Hawkridge and close above Tarr-steps, a wonderful crossing of Barle river,
made (as everybody knows) by Satan, for a wager. But throughout the
winter, she found sea-air agreeable, and a place where things could be had
on credit, and more occasion of talking. Not but what she could have credit
(for every one was afraid of her) in the neighbourhood of Tarr-steps; only
there was no one handy owning things worth taking.
Therefore, at the fall of the leaf, when the woods grew damp and
irksome, the wise woman always set her face to the warmer cliffs of the
Channel; where shelter was, and dry fern bedding, and folk to be seen in the
distance, from a bank upon which the sun shone. And there, as I knew from
our John Fry (who had been to her about rheumatism, and sheep possessed
with an evil spirit, and warts on the hand of his son, young John), any one
who chose might find her, towards the close of a winter day, gathering
sticks and brown fern for fuel, and talking to herself the while, in a hollow
stretch behind the cliffs; which foreigners, who come and go without seeing
much of Exmoor, have called the Valley of Rocks.

This valley, or goyal, as we term it, being small for a valley, lies to the
west of Linton, about a mile from the town perhaps, and away towards Ley
Manor. Our homefolk always call it the Danes, or the Denes, which is no
more, they tell me, than a hollow place, even as the word “den” is.
However, let that pass, for I know very little about it; but the place itself is a
pretty one, though nothing to frighten anybody, unless he hath lived in a
gallipot. It is a green rough-sided hollow, bending at the middle, touched
with stone at either crest, and dotted here and there with slabs in and out the
brambles. On the right hand is an upward crag, called by some the Castle,
easy enough to scale, and giving great view of the Channel. Facing this,
from the inland side and the elbow of the valley, a queer old pile of rock
arises, bold behind one another, and quite enough to affright a man, if it
only were ten times larger. This is called the Devil's Cheese-ring, or the
Devil's Cheese-knife, which mean the same thing, as our fathers were used
to eat their cheese from a scoop; and perhaps in old time the upmost rock
(which has fallen away since I knew it) was like to such an implement, if
Satan eat cheese untoasted.
But all the middle of this valley was a place to rest in; to sit and think
that troubles were not, if we would not make them. To know the sea outside

the hills, but never to behold it; only by the sound of waves to pity sailors
labouring. Then to watch the sheltered sun, coming warmly round the turn,
like a guest expected, full of gentle glow and gladness, casting shadow far
away as a thing to hug itself, and awakening life from dew, and hope from
every spreading bud. And then to fall asleep and dream that the fern was all
asparagus.
Alas, I was too young in those days much to care for creature
comforts, or to let pure palate have things that would improve it. Anything
went down with me, as it does with most of us. Too late we know the good
from bad; the knowledge is no pleasure then; being memory's medicine
rather than the wine of hope.
Now Mother Melldrum kept her winter in this vale of rocks, sheltering
from the wind and rain within the Devil's Cheese-ring, which added greatly
to her fame because all else, for miles around, were afraid to go near it after
dark, or even on a gloomy day. Under eaves of lichened rock she had a
winding passage, which none that ever I knew of durst enter but herself.
And to this place I went to seek her, in spite of all misgivings, upon a
Sunday in Lenten season, when the sheep were folded.
Our parson (as if he had known my intent) had preached a beautiful
sermon about the Witch of Endor, and the perils of them that meddle
wantonly with the unseen Powers; and therein he referred especially to the
strange noise in the neighbourhood, and upbraided us for want of faith, and
many other backslidings. We listened to him very earnestly, for we like to
hear from our betters about things that are beyond us, and to be roused up
now and then, like sheep with a good dog after them, who can pull some
wool without biting. Nevertheless we could not see how our want of faith
could have made that noise, especially at night time, notwithstanding which
we believed it, and hoped to do a little better.
And so we all came home from church; and most of the people dined
with us, as they always do on Sundays, because of the distance to go home,
with only words inside them. The parson, who always sat next to mother,
was afraid that he might have vexed us, and would not have the best piece
of meat, according to his custom. But soon we put him at his ease, and
showed him we were proud of him; and then he made no more to do, but
accepted the best of the sirloin.

CHAPTER XVIII
WITCHERY LEADS TO WITCHCRAFT

Although wellnigh the end of March,
the wind blew wild and piercing, as I went
on foot that afternoon to Mother Melldrum's
dwelling. It was safer not to take a horse,
lest (if anything vexed her) she should put a
spell upon him; as had been done to Farmer
Snowe's stable by the wise woman of
Simonsbath.
The sun was low on the edge of the
hills by the time I entered the valley, for I
could not leave home till the cattle were
tended, and the distance was seven miles or
more. The shadows of rocks fell far and
deep, and the brown dead fern was
fluttering, and brambles with their sere
leaves hanging, swayed their tatters to and fro, with a red look on them. In
patches underneath the crags, a few wild goats were browsing; then they
tossed their horns, and fled, and leaped on ledges, and stared at me.
Moreover, the sound of the sea came up, and went the length of the valley,
and there it lapped on a butt of rocks, and murmured like a shell.
Taking things one with another, and feeling all the lonesomeness, and
having no stick with me, I was much inclined to go briskly back, and come
at a better season. And when I beheld a tall grey shape, of something or
another, moving at the lower end of the valley, where the shade was, it gave
me such a stroke of fear, after many others, that my thumb which lay in
mother's Bible (brought in my big pocket for the sake of safety) shook so
much that it came out, and I could not get it in again. “This serves me
right,” I said to myself, “for tampering with Beelzebub. Oh that I had
listened to parson!”

And thereupon I struck aside; not liking to run away quite, as some
people might call it; but seeking to look like a wanderer who was come to
see the valley, and had seen almost enough of it. Herein I should have
succeeded, and gone home, and then been angry at my want of courage, but
that on the very turn and bending of my footsteps, the woman in the
distance lifted up her staff to me, so that I was bound to stop.
And now, being brought face to face, by the will of God (as one might
say) with anything that might come of it, I kept myself quite straight and
stiff, and thrust away all white feather, trusting in my Bible still, hoping that
it would protect me, though I had disobeyed it. But upon that remembrance,
my conscience took me by the leg, so that I could not go forward.
All this while, the fearful woman was coming near and more near to
me; and I was glad to sit down on a rock because my knees were shaking
so. I tried to think of many things, but none of them would come to me; and
I could not take my eyes away, though I prayed God to be near me.
But when she was come so nigh to me that I could descry her features,
there was something in her countenance that made me not dislike her. She
looked as if she had been visited by many troubles, and had felt them one
by one, yet held enough of kindly nature still to grieve for others. Long
white hair, on either side, was falling down below her chin; and through her
wrinkles clear bright eyes seemed to spread themselves upon me. Though I
had plenty of time to think, I was taken by surprise no less, and unable to
say anything; yet eager to hear the silence broken, and longing for a noise
or two.
“Thou art not come to me,” she said, looking through my simple face,
as if it were but glass, “to be struck for bone-shave, nor to be blessed for
barn-gun. Give me forth thy hand, John Ridd; and tell why thou art come to
me.”
But I was so much amazed at her knowing my name and all about me,
that I feared to place my hand in her power, or even my tongue by speaking.
“Have no fear of me, my son; I have no gift to harm thee; and if I had,
it should be idle. Now, if thou hast any wit, tell me why I love thee.”
“I never had any wit, mother,” I answered in our Devonshire way;
“and never set eyes on thee before, to the furthest of my knowledge.”

“And yet I know thee as well, John, as if thou wert my grandson.
Remember you the old Oare oak, and the bog at the head of Exe, and the
child who would have died there, but for thy strength and courage, and most
of all thy kindness? That was my granddaughter, John; and all I have on
earth to love.”
Now that she came to speak of it, with the place and that, so clearly, I
remembered all about it (a thing that happened last August), and thought
how stupid I must have been not to learn more of the little girl who had
fallen into the black pit, with a basketful of whortleberries, and who might
have been gulfed if her little dog had not spied me in the distance. I carried
her on my back to mother; and then we dressed her all anew, and took her
where she ordered us; but she did not tell us who she was, nor anything
more than her Christian name, and that she was eight years old, and fond of
fried batatas. And we did not seek to ask her more; as our manner is with
visitors.
But thinking of this little story, and seeing how she looked at me, I lost
my fear of Mother Melldrum, and began to like her; partly because I had
helped her grandchild, and partly that if she were so wise, no need would
have been for me to save the little thing from drowning. Therefore I stood
up and said, though scarcely yet established in my power against hers,—
“Good mother, the shoe she lost was in the mire, and not with us. And
we could not match it, although we gave her a pair of sister Lizzie's.”
“My son, what care I for her shoe? How simple thou art, and foolish!
according to the thoughts of some. Now tell me, for thou canst not lie, what
has brought thee to me.”
Being so ashamed and bashful, I was half-inclined to tell her a lie, until
she said that I could not do it; and then I knew that I could not.
“I am come to know,” I said, looking at a rock the while, to keep my
voice from shaking, “when I may go to see Lorna Doone.”
No more could I say, though my mind was charged to ask fifty other
questions. But although I looked away, it was plain that I had asked enough.
I felt that the wise woman gazed at me in wrath as well as sorrow; and then
I grew angry that any one should seem to make light of Lorna.
“John Ridd,” said the woman, observing this (for now I faced her
bravely), “of whom art thou speaking? Is it a child of the men who slew

your father?”
“I cannot tell, mother. How should I know? And what is that to thee?”
“It is something to thy mother, John, and something to thyself, I trow;
and nothing worse could befall thee.”
I waited for her to speak again, because she had spoken so sadly that it
took my breath away.
“John Ridd, if thou hast any value for thy body or thy soul, thy mother,
or thy father's name, have nought to do with any Doone.”
She gazed at me in earnest so, and raised her voice in saying it, until
the whole valley, curving like a great bell echoed “Doone,” that it seemed to
me my heart was gone for every one and everything. If it were God's will
for me to have no more of Lorna, let a sign come out of the rocks, and I
would try to believe it. But no sign came, and I turned to the woman, and
longed that she had been a man.
“You poor thing, with bones and blades, pails of water, and door-keys,
what know you about the destiny of a maiden such as Lorna? Chilblains
you may treat, and bone-shave, ringworm, and the scaldings; even scabby
sheep may limp the better for your strikings. John the Baptist and his
cousins, with the wool and hyssop, are for mares, and ailing dogs, and fowls
that have the jaundice. Look at me now, Mother Melldrum, am I like a
fool?”
“That thou art, my son. Alas that it were any other! Now behold the
end of that; John Ridd, mark the end of it.”
She pointed to the castle-rock, where upon a narrow shelf, betwixt us
and the coming stars, a bitter fight was raging. A fine fat sheep, with an
honest face, had clomb up very carefully to browse on a bit of juicy grass,
now the dew of the land was upon it. To him, from an upper crag, a lean
black goat came hurrying, with leaps, and skirmish of the horns, and an
angry noise in his nostrils. The goat had grazed the place before, to the
utmost of his liking, cropping in and out with jerks, as their manner is of
feeding. Nevertheless he fell on the sheep with fury and great malice.
The simple wether was much inclined to retire from the contest, but
looked around in vain for any way to peace and comfort. His enemy stood
between him and the last leap he had taken; there was nothing left him but
to fight, or be hurled into the sea, five hundred feet below.

“Lie down, lie down!” I shouted to him, as if he were a dog, for I had
seen a battle like this before, and knew that the sheep had no chance of life
except from his greater weight, and the difficulty of moving him.

“Lie down, lie down, John Ridd!” cried Mother Melldrum, mocking
me, but without a sign of smiling.
The poor sheep turned, upon my voice, and looked at me so piteously
that I could look no longer; but ran with all my speed to try and save him
from the combat. He saw that I could not be in time, for the goat was
bucking to leap at him, and so the good wether stooped his forehead, with
the harmless horns curling aside of it; and the goat flung his heels up, and
rushed at him, with quick sharp jumps and tricks of movement, and the
points of his long horns always foremost, and his little scut cocked like a
gun-hammer.
As I ran up the steep of the rock, I could not see what they were doing,
but the sheep must have fought very bravely at last, and yielded his ground
quite slowly, and I hoped almost to save him. But just as my head topped
the platform of rock, I saw him flung from it backward, with a sad low
moan and a gurgle. His body made quite a short noise in the air, like a
bucket thrown down a well shaft, and I could not tell when it struck the
water, except by the echo among the rocks. So wroth was I with the goat at
the moment (being somewhat scant of breath and unable to consider), that I
caught him by the right hind-leg, before he could turn from his victory, and
hurled him after the sheep, to learn how he liked his own compulsion.

CHAPTER XIX
ANOTHER DANGEROUS INTERVIEW

Although I left the Denes at once, having little
heart for further questions of the wise woman, and
being afraid to visit her house under the Devil's
Cheese-ring (to which she kindly invited me), and
although I ran most part of the way, it was very late
for farm-house time upon a Sunday evening before I
was back at Plover's Barrows. My mother had great
desire to know all about the matter; but I could not
reconcile it with my respect so to frighten her.
Therefore I tried to sleep it off, keeping my own
counsel; and when that proved of no avail, I strove
to work it away, it might be, by heavy outdoor
labour, and weariness, and good feeding. These indeed had some effect, and
helped to pass a week or two, with more pain of hand than heart to me.
But when the weather changed in earnest, and the frost was gone, and
the south-west wind blew softly, and the lambs were at play with the
daisies, it was more than I could do to keep from thought of Lorna. For now
the fields were spread with growth, and the waters clad with sunshine, and
light and shadow, step by step, wandered over the furzy cleves. All the sides
of the hilly wood were gathered in and out with green, silver-grey, or russet
points, according to the several manner of the trees beginning. And if one
stood beneath an elm, with any heart to look at it, lo! all the ground was
strewn with flakes (too small to know their meaning), and all the sprays
above were rasped and trembling with a redness. And so I stopped beneath
the tree, and carved L.D. upon it, and wondered at the buds of thought that
seemed to swell inside me.
The upshot of it all was this, that as no Lorna came to me, except in
dreams or fancy, and as my life was not worth living without constant sign
of her, forth I must again to find her, and say more than a man can tell.
Therefore, without waiting longer for the moving of the spring, dressed I

was in grand attire (so far as I had gotten it), and thinking my appearance
good, although with doubts about it (being forced to dress in the hay-tallat),
round the corner of the wood-stack went I very knowingly—for Lizzie's
eyes were wondrous sharp—and then I was sure of meeting none who
would care or dare to speak of me.
It lay upon my conscience often that I had not made dear Annie secret
to this history; although in all things I could trust her, and she loved me like
a lamb. Many and many a time I tried, and more than once began the thing;
but there came a dryness in my throat, and a knocking under the roof of my
mouth, and a longing to put it off again, as perhaps might be the wisest. And
then I would remember too that I had no right to speak of Lorna as if she
were common property.
This time I longed to take my gun, and was half resolved to do so;
because it seemed so hard a thing to be shot at and have no chance of
shooting; but when I came to remember the steepness and the slippery
nature of the waterslide, there seemed but little likelihood of keeping dry
the powder. Therefore I was armed with nothing but a good stout holly
staff, seasoned well for many a winter in our back-kitchen chimney.
Although my heart was leaping high with the prospect of some
adventure, and the fear of meeting Lorna, I could not but be gladdened by
the softness of the weather, and the welcome way of everything. There was
that power all round, that power and that goodness, which make us come, as
it were, outside our bodily selves, to share them. Over and beside us
breathes the joy of hope and promise; under foot are troubles past; in the
distance bowering newness tempts us ever forward. We quicken with
largesse of life, and spring with vivid mystery.

And, in good sooth, I had to spring, and no mystery about it, ere ever I
got to the top of the rift leading into Doone-glade. For the stream was
rushing down in strength, and raving at every corner; a mort of rain having
fallen last night and no wind come to wipe it. However, I reached the head
ere dark with more difficulty than danger, and sat in a place which
comforted my back and legs desirably.
Hereupon I grew so happy at being on dry land again, and come to
look for Lorna, with pretty trees around me, that what did I do but fall
asleep with the holly-stick in front of me, and my best coat sunk in a bed of
moss, with water and wood-sorrel. Mayhap I had not done so, nor yet
enjoyed the spring so much, if so be I had not taken three parts of a gallon
of cider at home, at Plover's Barrows, because of the lowness and sinking
ever since I met Mother Melldrum.
There was a little runnel going softly down beside me, falling from the
upper rock by the means of moss and grass, as if it feared to make a noise,
and had a mother sleeping. Now and then it seemed to stop, in fear of its
own dropping, and wait for some orders; and the blades of grass that
straightened to it turned their points a little way, and offered their allegiance
to wind instead of water. Yet before their carkled edges bent more than a
driven saw, down the water came again with heavy drops and pats of
running, and bright anger at neglect.
This was very pleasant to me, now and then, to gaze at, blinking as the
water blinked, and falling back to sleep again. Suddenly my sleep was

broken by a shade cast over me; between me and the low sunlight Lorna
Doone was standing.
“Master Ridd, are you mad?” she said, and took my hand to move me.
“Not mad, but half asleep,” I answered, feigning not to notice her, that
so she might keep hold of me.
“Come away, come away, if you care for life. The patrol will be here
directly. Be quick, Master Ridd, let me hide thee.”
“I will not stir a step,” said I, though being in the greatest fright that
might be well imagined, “unless you call me 'John.'”
“Well, John, then—Master John Ridd, be quick, if you have any to
care for you.”
“I have many that care for me,” I said, just to let her know; “and I will
follow you, Mistress Lorna, albeit without any hurry, unless there be peril to
more than me.”
Without another word she led me, though with many timid glances
towards the upper valley, to, and into, her little bower, where the inlet
through the rock was. I am almost sure that I spoke before (though I cannot
now go seek for it, and my memory is but a worn-out tub) of a certain deep
and perilous pit, in which I was like to drown myself through hurry and
fright of boyhood. And even then I wondered greatly, and was vexed with
Lorna for sending me in that heedless manner into such an entrance. But
now it was clear that she had been right and the fault mine own entirely; for
the entrance to the pit was only to be found by seeking it. Inside the niche
of native stone, the plainest thing of all to see, at any rate by day light, was
the stairway hewn from rock, and leading up the mountain, by means of
which I had escaped, as before related. To the right side of this was the
mouth of the pit, still looking very formidable; though Lorna laughed at my
fear of it, for she drew her water thence. But on the left was a narrow
crevice, very difficult to espy, and having a sweep of grey ivy laid, like a
slouching beaver, over it. A man here coming from the brightness of the
outer air, with eyes dazed by the twilight, would never think of seeing this
and following it to its meaning.
Lorna raised the screen for me, but I had much ado to pass, on account
of bulk and stature. Instead of being proud of my size (as it seemed to me
she ought to be) Lorna laughed so quietly that I was ready to knock my

head or elbows against anything, and say no more about it. However, I got
through at last without a word of compliment, and broke into the pleasant
room, the lone retreat of Lorna.
The chamber was of unhewn rock, round, as near as might be, eighteen
or twenty feet across, and gay with rich variety of fern and moss and lichen.
The fern was in its winter still, or coiling for the spring-tide; but moss was
in abundant life, some feathering, and some gobleted, and some with fringe
of red to it. Overhead there was no ceiling but the sky itself, flaked with
little clouds of April whitely wandering over it. The floor was made of soft
low grass, mixed with moss and primroses; and in a niche of shelter moved
the delicate wood-sorrel. Here and there, around the sides, were “chairs of
living stone,” as some Latin writer says, whose name has quite escaped me;
and in the midst a tiny spring arose, with crystal beads in it, and a soft voice
as of a laughing dream, and dimples like a sleeping babe. Then, after going
round a little, with surprise of daylight, the water overwelled the edge, and
softly went through lines of light to shadows and an untold bourne.
While I was gazing at all these things with wonder and some sadness,
Lorna turned upon me lightly (as her manner was) and said,—
“Where are the new-laid eggs, Master Ridd? Or hath blue hen ceased
laying?”
I did not altogether like the way in which she said it with a sort of
dialect, as if my speech could be laughed at.
“Here be some,” I answered, speaking as if in spite of her. “I would
have brought thee twice as many, but that I feared to crush them in the
narrow ways, Mistress Lorna.”
And so I laid her out two dozen upon the moss of the rock-ledge,
unwinding the wisp of hay from each as it came safe out of my pocket.
Lorna looked with growing wonder, as I added one to one; and when I had
placed them side by side, and bidden her now to tell them, to my
amazement what did she do but burst into a flood of tears.
“What have I done?” I asked, with shame, scarce daring even to look
at her, because her grief was not like Annie's—a thing that could be coaxed
away, and left a joy in going—“oh, what have I done to vex you so?”
“It is nothing done by you, Master Ridd,” she answered, very proudly,
as if nought I did could matter; “it is only something that comes upon me

with the scent of the pure true clover-hay.
Moreover, you have been too kind; and I am not
used to kindness.”
Some sort of awkwardness was on me, at her
words and weeping, as if I would like to say
something, but feared to make things worse
perhaps than they were already. Therefore I
abstained from speech, as I would in my own pain.
And as it happened, this was the way to make her
tell me more about it. Not that I was curious,
beyond what pity urged me and the strange affairs
around her; and now I gazed upon the floor, lest I
should seem to watch her; but none the less for
that I knew all that she was doing.
Lorna went a little way, as if she would not think of me nor care for
one so careless; and all my heart gave a sudden jump, to go like a mad thing
after her; until she turned of her own accord, and with a little sigh came
back to me. Her eyes were soft with trouble's shadow, and the proud lift of
her neck was gone, and beauty's vanity borne down by woman's want of
sustenance.
“Master Ridd,” she said in the softest voice that ever flowed between
two lips, “have I done aught to offend you?”
Hereupon it went hard with me, not to catch her up and kiss her, in the
manner in which she was looking; only it smote me suddenly that this
would be a low advantage of her trust and helplessness. She seemed to
know what I would be at, and to doubt very greatly about it, whether as a
child of old she might permit the usage. All sorts of things went through my
head, as I made myself look away from her, for fear of being tempted
beyond what I could bear. And the upshot of it was that I said, within my
heart and through it, “John Ridd, be on thy very best manners with this
lonely maiden.”
Lorna liked me all the better for my good forbearance; because she did
not love me yet, and had not thought about it; at least so far as I knew. And
though her eyes were so beauteous, so very soft and kindly, there was (to
my apprehension) some great power in them, as if she would not have a
thing, unless her judgment leaped with it.

But now her judgment leaped with me, because I had behaved so well;
and being of quick urgent nature—such as I delight in, for the change from
mine own slowness—she, without any let or hindrance, sitting over against
me, now raising and now dropping fringe over those sweet eyes that were
the road-lights of her tongue, Lorna told me all about everything I wished to
know, every little thing she knew, except indeed that point of points, how
Master Ridd stood with her.
Although it wearied me no whit, it might be wearisome for folk who
cannot look at Lorna, to hear the story all in speech, exactly as she told it;
therefore let me put it shortly, to the best of my remembrance.
Nay, pardon me, whosoever thou art, for seeming fickle and rude to
thee; I have tried to do as first proposed, to tell the tale in my own words, as
of another's fortune. But, lo! I was beset at once with many heavy obstacles,
which grew as I went onward, until I knew not where I was, and mingled
past and present. And two of these difficulties only were enough to stop me;
the one that I must coldly speak without the force of pity, the other that I,
off and on, confused myself with Lorna, as might be well expected.
Therefore let her tell the story, with her own sweet voice and manner;
and if ye find it wearisome, seek in yourselves the weariness.

CHAPTER XX
LORNA BEGINS HER STORY

“I cannot go through all my thoughts so as to
make them clear to you, nor have I ever dwelt on
things, to shape a story of them. I know not where
the beginning was, nor where the middle ought to
be, nor even how at the present time I feel, or think,
or ought to think. If I look for help to those around
me, who should tell me right and wrong (being
older and much wiser), I meet sometimes with
laughter, and at other times with anger.
“There are but two in the world who ever listen
and try to help me; one of them is my grandfather, and the other is a man of
wisdom, whom we call the Counsellor. My grandfather, Sir Ensor Doone, is
very old and harsh of manner (except indeed to me); he seems to know
what is right and wrong, but not to want to think of it. The Counsellor, on
the other hand, though full of life and subtleties, treats my questions as of
play, and not gravely worth his while to answer, unless he can make wit of
them.
“And among the women there are none with whom I can hold
converse, since my Aunt Sabina died, who took such pains to teach me. She
was a lady of high repute and lofty ways, and learning, but grieved and
harassed more and more by the coarseness, and the violence, and the
ignorance around her. In vain she strove, from year to year, to make the
young men hearken, to teach them what became their birth, and give them
sense of honour. It was her favourite word, poor thing! and they called her
'Old Aunt Honour.' Very often she used to say that I was her only comfort,
and I am sure she was my only one; and when she died it was more to me
than if I had lost a mother.
“For I have no remembrance now of father or of mother, although they
say that my father was the eldest son of Sir Ensor Doone, and the bravest

and the best of them. And so they call me heiress to this little realm of
violence; and in sorry sport sometimes, I am their Princess or their Queen.
“Many people living here, as I am forced to do, would perhaps be very
happy, and perhaps I ought to be so. We have a beauteous valley, sheltered
from the cold of winter and power of the summer sun, untroubled also by
the storms and mists that veil the mountains; although I must acknowledge
that it is apt to rain too often. The grass moreover is so fresh, and the brook
so bright and lively, and flowers of so many hues come after one another
that no one need be dull, if only left alone with them.
“And so in the early days perhaps, when morning breathes around me,
and the sun is going upward, and light is playing everywhere, I am not so
far beside them all as to live in shadow. But when the evening gathers
down, and the sky is spread with sadness, and the day has spent itself; then
a cloud of lonely trouble falls, like night, upon me. I cannot see the things I
quest for of a world beyond me; I cannot join the peace and quiet of the
depth above me; neither have I any pleasure in the brightness of the stars.
“What I want to know is something none of them can tell me—what
am I, and why set here, and when shall I be with them? I see that you are
surprised a little at this my curiosity. Perhaps such questions never spring in
any wholesome spirit. But they are in the depths of mine, and I cannot be
quit of them.
“Meantime, all around me is violence and robbery, coarse delight and
savage pain, reckless joke and hopeless death. Is it any wonder that I cannot
sink with these, that I cannot so forget my soul, as to live the life of brutes,
and die the death more horrible because it dreams of waking? There is none
to lead me forward, there is none to teach me right; young as I am, I live
beneath a curse that lasts for ever.”
Here Lorna broke down for awhile, and cried so very piteously, that
doubting of my knowledge, and of any power to comfort, I did my best to
hold my peace, and tried to look very cheerful. Then thinking that might be
bad manners, I went to wipe her eyes for her.

“Master Ridd,” she began again, “I am both ashamed and vexed at my
own childish folly. But you, who have a mother, who thinks (you say) so
much of you, and sisters, and a quiet home; you cannot tell (it is not likely)
what a lonely nature is. How it leaps in mirth sometimes, with only heaven

touching it; and how it falls away desponding, when the dreary weight
creeps on.
“It does not happen many times that I give way like this; more shame
now to do so, when I ought to entertain you. Sometimes I am so full of
anger, that I dare not trust to speech, at things they cannot hide from me;
and perhaps you would be much surprised that reckless men would care so
much to elude a young girl's knowledge. They used to boast to Aunt Sabina
of pillage and of cruelty, on purpose to enrage her; but they never boast to
me. It even makes me smile sometimes to see how awkwardly they come
and offer for temptation to me shining packets, half concealed, of
ornaments and finery, of rings, or chains, or jewels, lately belonging to
other people.

“But when I try to search the past, to get a sense of what befell me ere
my own perception formed; to feel back for the lines of childhood, as a
trace of gossamer, then I only know that nought lives longer than God wills
it. So may after sin go by, for we are children always, as the Counsellor has
told me; so may we, beyond the clouds, seek this infancy of life, and never
find its memory.

“But I am talking now of things which never come across me when
any work is toward. It might have been a good thing for me to have had a
father to beat these rovings out of me; or a mother to make a home, and
teach me how to manage it. For, being left with none—I think; and nothing
ever comes of it. Nothing, I mean, which I can grasp and have with any
surety; nothing but faint images, and wonderment, and wandering. But
often, when I am neither searching back into remembrance, nor asking of
my parents, but occupied by trifles, something like a sign, or message, or a
token of some meaning, seems to glance upon me. Whether from the
rustling wind, or sound of distant music, or the singing of a bird, like the
sun on snow it strikes me with a pain of pleasure.
“And often when I wake at night, and listen to the silence, or wander
far from people in the grayness of the evening, or stand and look at quiet
water having shadows over it, some vague image seems to hover on the
skirt of vision, ever changing place and outline, ever flitting as I follow.
This so moves and hurries me, in the eagerness and longing, that
straightway all my chance is lost; and memory, scared like a wild bird, flies.
Or am I as a child perhaps, chasing a flown cageling, who among the
branches free plays and peeps at the offered cage (as a home not to be urged
on him), and means to take his time of coming, if he comes at all?
“Often too I wonder at the odds of fortune, which made me (helpless
as I am, and fond of peace and reading) the heiress of this mad domain, the
sanctuary of unholiness. It is not likely that I shall have much power of
authority; and yet the Counsellor creeps up to be my Lord of the Treasury;
and his son aspires to my hand, as of a Royal alliance. Well, 'honour among
thieves,' they say; and mine is the first honour: although among decent folk
perhaps, honesty is better.
“We should not be so quiet here, and safe from interruption but that I
have begged one privilege rather than commanded it. This was that the
lower end, just this narrowing of the valley, where it is most hard to come
at, might be looked upon as mine, except for purposes of guard. Therefore
none beside the sentries ever trespass on me here, unless it be my
grandfather, or the Counsellor or Carver.
“By your face, Master Ridd, I see that you have heard of Carver
Doone. For strength and courage and resource he bears the first repute
among us, as might well be expected from the son of the Counsellor. But he

differs from his father, in being very hot and savage, and quite free from
argument. The Counsellor, who is my uncle, gives his son the best advice;
commending all the virtues, with eloquence and wisdom; yet himself
abstaining from them accurately and impartially.
“You must be tired of this story, and the time I take to think, and the
weakness of my telling; but my life from day to day shows so little
variance. Among the riders there is none whose safe return I watch for—I
mean none more than other—and indeed there seems no risk, all are now so
feared of us. Neither of the old men is there whom I can revere or love
(except alone my grandfather, whom I love with trembling): neither of the
women any whom I like to deal with, unless it be a little maiden whom I
saved from starving.
“A little Cornish girl she is, and shaped in
western manner, not so very much less in width than
if you take her lengthwise. Her father seems to have
been a miner, a Cornishman (as she declares) of
more than average excellence, and better than any
two men to be found in Devonshire, or any four in
Somerset. Very few things can have been beyond his
power of performance, and yet he left his daughter to
starve upon a peat-rick. She does not know how this
was done, and looks upon it as a mystery, the
meaning of which will some day be clear, and
redound to her father's honour. His name was Simon
Carfax, and he came as the captain of a gang from one of the Cornish
stannaries. Gwenny Carfax, my young maid, well remembers how her
father was brought up from Cornwall. Her mother had been buried, just a
week or so before; and he was sad about it, and had been off his work, and
was ready for another job. Then people came to him by night, and said that
he must want a change, and everybody lost their wives, and work was the
way to mend it. So what with grief, and over-thought, and the inside of a
square bottle, Gwenny says they brought him off, to become a mighty
captain, and choose the country round. The last she saw of him was this,
that he went down a ladder somewhere on the wilds of Exmoor, leaving her
with bread and cheese, and his travelling-hat to see to. And from that day to
this he never came above the ground again; so far as we can hear of.

“But Gwenny, holding to his hat, and having eaten the bread and
cheese (when he came no more to help her), dwelt three days near the
mouth of the hole; and then it was closed over, the while that she was
sleeping. With weakness and with want of food, she lost herself
distressfully, and went away for miles or more, and lay upon a peat-rick, to
die before the ravens.
“That very day I chanced to return from Aunt Sabina's dying-place; for
she would not die in Glen Doone, she said, lest the angels feared to come
for her; and so she was taken to a cottage in a lonely valley. I was allowed
to visit her, for even we durst not refuse the wishes of the dying; and if a
priest had been desired, we should have made bold with him. Returning
very sorrowful, and caring now for nothing, I found this little stray thing
lying, her arms upon her, and not a sign of life, except the way that she was
biting. Black root-stuff was in her mouth, and a piece of dirty sheep's wool,
and at her feet an old egg-shell of some bird of the moorland.
“I tried to raise her, but she was too square and heavy for me; and so I
put food in her mouth, and left her to do right with it. And this she did in a
little time; for the victuals were very choice and rare, being what I had
taken over to tempt poor Aunt Sabina. Gwenny ate them without delay, and
then was ready to eat the basket and the ware that contained them.
“Gwenny took me for an angel—though I am little like one, as you
see, Master Ridd; and she followed me, expecting that I would open wings
and fly when we came to any difficulty. I brought her home with me, so far
as this can be a home, and she made herself my sole attendant, without so
much as asking me. She has beaten two or three other girls, who used to
wait upon me, until they are afraid to come near the house of my
grandfather. She seems to have no kind of fear even of our roughest men;
and yet she looks with reverence and awe upon the Counsellor. As for the
wickedness, and theft, and revelry around her, she says it is no concern of
hers, and they know their own business best. By this way of regarding men
she has won upon our riders, so that she is almost free from all control of
place and season, and is allowed to pass where none even of the youths may
go. Being so wide, and short, and flat, she has none to pay her compliments;
and, were there any, she would scorn them, as not being Cornishmen.
Sometimes she wanders far, by moonlight, on the moors and up the rivers,
to give her father (as she says) another chance of finding her, and she comes

back not a wit defeated, or discouraged, or depressed, but confident that he
is only waiting for the proper time.
“Herein she sets me good example of a patience and contentment hard
for me to imitate. Oftentimes I am vexed by things I cannot meddle with,
yet which cannot be kept from me, that I am at the point of flying from this
dreadful valley, and risking all that can betide me in the unknown outer
world. If it were not for my grandfather, I would have done so long ago; but
I cannot bear that he should die with no gentle hand to comfort him; and I
fear to think of the conflict that must ensue for the government, if there be a
disputed succession.
“Ah me! We are to be pitied greatly, rather than condemned, by people
whose things we have taken from them; for I have read, and seem almost to
understand about it, that there are places on the earth where gentle peace,
and love of home, and knowledge of one's neighbours prevail, and are, with
reason, looked for as the usual state of things. There honest folk may go to
work in the glory of the sunrise, with hope of coming home again quite safe
in the quiet evening, and finding all their children; and even in the darkness
they have no fear of lying down, and dropping off to slumber, and hearken
to the wind of night, not as to an enemy trying to find entrance, but a friend
who comes to tell the value of their comfort.
“Of all this golden ease I hear, but never saw the like of it; and, haply, I
shall never do so, being born to turbulence. Once, indeed, I had the offer of
escape, and kinsman's aid, and high place in the gay, bright world; and yet I
was not tempted much, or, at least, dared not to trust it. And it ended very
sadly, so dreadfully that I even shrink from telling you about it; for that one
terror changed my life, in a moment, at a blow, from childhood and from
thoughts of play and commune with the flowers and trees, to a sense of
death and darkness, and a heavy weight of earth. Be content now, Master
Ridd ask me nothing more about it, so your sleep be sounder.”
But I, John Ridd, being young and new, and very fond of hearing
things to make my blood to tingle, had no more of manners than to urge
poor Lorna onwards, hoping, perhaps, in depth of heart, that she might have
to hold by me, when the worst came to the worst of it. Therefore she went
on again.

CHAPTER XXI
LORNA ENDS HER STORY

“It is not a twelvemonth yet, although it
seems ten years agone, since I blew the
downy globe to learn the time of day, or set
beneath my chin the veinings of the
varnished buttercup, or fired the fox-glove
cannonade, or made a captive of myself with
dandelion fetters; for then I had not very
much to trouble me in earnest, but went
about, romancing gravely, playing at bo-
peep with fear, making for myself strong
heroes of gray rock or fir-tree, adding to my
own importance, as the children love to do.
“As yet I had not truly learned the evil
of our living, the scorn of law, the outrage,
and the sorrow caused to others. It even was a point with all to hide the
roughness from me, to show me but the gallant side, and keep in shade the
other. My grandfather, Sir Ensor Doone, had given strictest order, as I
discovered afterwards, that in my presence all should be seemly, kind, and
vigilant. Nor was it very difficult to keep most part of the mischief from me,
for no Doone ever robs at home, neither do they quarrel much, except at
times of gambling. And though Sir Ensor Doone is now so old and growing
feeble, his own way he will have still, and no one dare deny him. Even our
fiercest and most mighty swordsmen, seared from all sense of right or
wrong, yet have plentiful sense of fear, when brought before that white-
haired man. Not that he is rough with them, or querulous, or rebukeful; but
that he has a strange soft smile, and a gaze they cannot answer, and a
knowledge deeper far than they have of themselves. Under his protection, I
am as safe from all those men (some of whom are but little akin to me) as if
I slept beneath the roof of the King's Lord Justiciary.

“But now, at the time I speak of, one evening of last summer, a
horrible thing befell, which took all play of childhood from me. The
fifteenth day of last July was very hot and sultry, long after the time of
sundown; and I was paying heed of it, because of the old saying that if it
rain then, rain will fall on forty days thereafter. I had been long by the
waterside at this lower end of the valley, plaiting a little crown of woodbine
crocketed with sprigs of heath—to please my grandfather, who likes to see
me gay at supper-time. Being proud of my tiara, which had cost some
trouble, I set it on my head at once, to save the chance of crushing, and
carrying my gray hat, ventured by a path not often trod. For I must be home
at the supper-time, or grandfather would be exceeding wrath; and the worst
of his anger is that he never condescends to show it.
“Therefore, instead of the open mead, or the windings of the river, I
made short cut through the ash-trees covert which lies in the middle of our
vale, with the water skirting or cleaving it. You have never been up so far as
that—at least to the best of my knowledge—but you see it like a long gray
spot, from the top of the cliffs above us. Here I was not likely to meet any
of our people because the young ones are afraid of some ancient tale about
it, and the old ones have no love of trees where gunshots are uncertain.
“It was more almost than dusk, down below the tree-leaves, and I was
eager to go through, and be again beyond it. For the gray dark hung around
me, scarcely showing shadow; and the little light that glimmered seemed to
come up from the ground. For the earth was strown with the winter-spread
and coil of last year's foliage, the lichened claws of chalky twigs, and the
numberless decay which gives a light in its decaying. I, for my part,
hastened shyly, ready to draw back and run from hare, or rabbit, or small
field-mouse.
“At a sudden turn of the narrow path, where it stopped again to the
river, a man leaped out from behind a tree, and stopped me, and seized hold
of me. I tried to shriek, but my voice was still; I could only hear my heart.
“'Now, Cousin Lorna, my good cousin,' he said, with ease and
calmness; 'your voice is very sweet, no doubt, from all that I can see of you.
But I pray you keep it still, unless you would give to dusty death your very
best cousin and trusty guardian, Alan Brandir of Loch Awe.'
“'You my guardian!' I said, for the idea was too ludicrous; and
ludicrous things always strike me first, through some fault of nature.

“'I have in truth that honour, madam,' he answered, with a sweeping
bow; 'unless I err in taking you for Mistress Lorna Doone.'
“'You have not mistaken me. My name is Lorna Doone.'
“He looked at me, with gravity, and was inclined to make some claim
to closer consideration upon the score of kinship; but I shrunk back, and
only said, 'Yes, my name is Lorna Doone.'
“'Then I am your faithful guardian, Alan Brandir of Loch Awe; called
Lord Alan Brandir, son of a worthy peer of Scotland. Now will you confide
in me?'
“'I confide in you!” I cried, looking at him with amazement; 'why, you
are not older than I am!'
“'Yes I am, three years at least. You, my ward, are not sixteen. I, your
worshipful guardian, am almost nineteen years of age.'
“Upon hearing this I looked at him, for that seemed then a venerable
age; but the more I looked the more I doubted, although he was dressed
quite like a man. He led me in a courtly manner, stepping at his tallest to an
open place beside the water; where the light came as in channel, and was
made the most of by glancing waves and fair white stones.

“'Now am I to your liking, cousin?' he asked, when I had gazed at him,
until I was almost ashamed, except at such a stripling. 'Does my Cousin

Lorna judge kindly of her guardian, and her nearest kinsman? In a word, is
our admiration mutual?'
“'Truly I know not,' I said; 'but you seem good-natured, and to have no
harm in you. Do they trust you with a sword?'
“For in my usage among men of stature and strong presence, this
pretty youth, so tricked and slender, seemed nothing but a doll to me.
Although he scared me in the wood, now that I saw him in good twilight,
lo! he was but little greater than my little self; and so tasselled and so
ruffled with a mint of bravery, and a green coat barred with red, and a slim
sword hanging under him, it was the utmost I could do to look at him half-
gravely.
“'I fear that my presence hath scarce enough of ferocity about it' (he
gave a jerk to his sword as he spoke, and clanked it on the brook-stones);
'yet do I assure you, cousin, that I am not without some prowess; and many
a master of defence hath this good sword of mine disarmed. Now if the
boldest and biggest robber in all this charming valley durst so much as
breathe the scent of that flower coronal, which doth not adorn but is
adorned'—here he talked some nonsense—'I would cleave him from head to
foot, ere ever he could fly or cry.'
“'Hush!' I said; 'talk not so loudly, or thou mayst have to do both
thyself, and do them both in vain.'
“For he was quite forgetting now, in his bravery before me, where he
stood, and with whom he spoke, and how the summer lightning shone
above the hills and down the hollow. And as I gazed on this slight fair
youth, clearly one of high birth and breeding (albeit over-boastful), a chill
of fear crept over me; because he had no strength or substance, and would
be no more than a pin-cushion before the great swords of the Doones.
“'I pray you be not vexed with me,' he answered, in a softer voice; 'for
I have travelled far and sorely, for the sake of seeing you. I know right well
among whom I am, and that their hospitality is more of the knife than the
salt-stand. Nevertheless I am safe enough, for my foot is the fleetest in
Scotland, and what are these hills to me? Tush! I have seen some border
forays among wilder spirits and craftier men than these be. Once I mind
some years agone, when I was quite a stripling lad—'
“'Worshipful guardian,' I said, 'there is no time now for history. If thou
art in no haste, I am, and cannot stay here idling. Only tell me how I am

akin and under wardship to thee, and what purpose brings thee here.'
“'In order, cousin—all things in order, even with fair ladies. First, I am
thy uncle's son, my father is thy mother's brother, or at least thy
grandmother's—unless I am deceived in that which I have guessed, and no
other man. For my father, being a leading lord in the councils of King
Charles the Second, appointed me to learn the law, not for my livelihood,
thank God, but because he felt the lack of it in affairs of state. But first your
leave, young Mistress Lorna; I cannot lay down legal maxims, without aid
of smoke.'
“He leaned against a willow-tree, and drawing from a gilded box a
little dark thing like a stick, placed it between his lips, and then striking a
flint on steel made fire and caught it upon touchwood. With this he kindled
the tip of the stick, until it glowed with a ring of red, and then he breathed
forth curls of smoke, blue and smelling on the air like spice. I had never
seen this done before, though acquainted with tobacco-pipes; and it made
me laugh, until I thought of the peril that must follow it.
“'Cousin, have no fear,' he said; 'this makes me all the safer; they will
take me for a glow-worm, and thee for the flower it shines upon. But to
return—of law I learned as you may suppose, but little; although I have
capacities. But the thing was far too dull for me. All I care for is adventure,
moving chance, and hot encounter; therefore all of law I learned was how to
live without it. Nevertheless, for amusement's sake, as I must needs be at
my desk an hour or so in the afternoon, I took to the sporting branch of the
law, the pitfalls, and the ambuscades; and of all the traps to be laid therein,
pedigrees are the rarest. There is scarce a man worth a cross of butter, but
what you may find a hole in his shield within four generations. And so I
struck our own escutcheon, and it sounded hollow. There is a point—but
heed not that; enough that being curious now, I followed up the quarry, and
I am come to this at last—we, even we, the lords of Loch Awe, have an
outlaw for our cousin, and I would we had more, if they be like you.'
“'Sir,' I answered, being amused by his manner, which was new to me
(for the Doones are much in earnest), 'surely you count it no disgrace to be
of kin to Sir Ensor Doone, and all his honest family!'
“'If it be so, it is in truth the very highest honour and would heal ten
holes in our escutcheon. What noble family but springs from a captain
among robbers? Trade alone can spoil our blood; robbery purifies it. The

robbery of one age is the chivalry of the next. We may start anew, and vie
with even the nobility of France, if we can once enrol but half the Doones
upon our lineage.'
“'I like not to hear you speak of the Doones, as if they were no more
than that,' I exclaimed, being now unreasonable; 'but will you tell me, once
for all, sir, how you are my guardian?'
“'That I will do. You are my ward because you were my father's ward,
under the Scottish law; and now my father being so deaf, I have succeeded
to that right—at least in my own opinion—under which claim I am here to
neglect my trust no longer, but to lead you away from scenes and deeds
which (though of good repute and comely) are not the best for young
gentlewomen. There spoke I not like a guardian? After that can you mistrust
me?'
“'But,' said I, 'good Cousin Alan (if I may so call you), it is not meet
for young gentlewomen to go away with young gentlemen, though fifty
times their guardians. But if you will only come with me, and explain your
tale to my grandfather, he will listen to you quietly, and take no advantage
of you.'
“'I thank you much, kind Mistress Lorna, to lead the goose into the
fox's den! But, setting by all thought of danger, I have other reasons against
it. Now, come with your faithful guardian, child. I will pledge my honour
against all harm, and to bear you safe to London. By the law of the realm, I
am now entitled to the custody of your fair person, and of all your chattels.'
“'But, sir, all that you have learned of law, is how to live without it.'
“'Fairly met, fair cousin mine! Your wit will do me credit, after a little
sharpening. And there is none to do that better than your aunt, my mother.
Although she knows not of my coming, she is longing to receive you.
Come, and in a few months' time you shall set the mode at Court, instead of
pining here, and weaving coronals of daisies.'
“I turned aside, and thought a little. Although he seemed so light of
mind, and gay in dress and manner, I could not doubt his honesty; and saw,
beneath his jaunty air, true mettle and ripe bravery. Scarce had I thought of
his project twice, until he spoke of my aunt, his mother, but then the form of
my dearest friend, my sweet Aunt Sabina, seemed to come and bid me
listen, for this was what she prayed for. Moreover I felt (though not as now)
that Doone Glen was no place for me or any proud young maiden. But

while I thought, the yellow lightning spread behind a bulk of clouds, three
times ere the flash was done, far off and void of thunder; and from the pile
of cloud before it, cut as from black paper, and lit to depths of blackness by
the blaze behind it, a form as of an aged man, sitting in a chair loose-
mantled, seemed to lift a hand and warn.
“This minded me of my grandfather, and all the care I owed him.
Moreover, now the storm was rising and I began to grow afraid; for of all
things awful to me thunder is the dreadfulest. It doth so growl, like a lion
coming, and then so roll, and roar, and rumble, out of a thickening darkness,
then crack like the last trump overhead through cloven air and terror, that all
my heart lies low and quivers, like a weed in water. I listened now for the
distant rolling of the great black storm, and heard it, and was hurried by it.
But the youth before me waved his rolled tobacco at it, and drawled in his
daintiest tone and manner,—
“'The sky is having a smoke, I see, and dropping sparks, and
grumbling. I should have thought these Exmoor hills too small to gather
thunder.'
“'I cannot go, I will not go with you, Lord Alan Brandir,' I answered,
being vexed a little by those words of his. 'You are not grave enough for
me, you are not old enough for me. My Aunt Sabina would not have wished
it; nor would I leave my grandfather, without his full permission. I thank
you much for coming, sir; but be gone at once by the way you came; and
pray how did you come, sir?'
“'Fair cousin, you will grieve for this; you will mourn, when you
cannot mend it. I would my mother had been here, soon would she have
persuaded you. And yet,' he added, with the smile of his accustomed gaiety,
'it would have been an unco thing, as we say in Scotland, for her ladyship to
have waited upon you, as her graceless son has done, and hopes to do again
ere long. Down the cliffs I came, and up them I must make way back again.
Now adieu, fair Cousin Lorna, I see you are in haste tonight; but I am right
proud of my guardianship. Give me just one flower for token'—here he
kissed his hand to me, and I threw him a truss of woodbine—'adieu, fair
cousin, trust me well, I will soon be here again.'
“'That thou never shalt, sir,' cried a voice as loud as a culverin; and
Carver Doone had Alan Brandir as a spider hath a fly. The boy made a little
shriek at first, with the sudden shock and the terror; then he looked,

methought, ashamed of himself, and set his face to fight for it. Very bravely
he strove and struggled, to free one arm and grasp his sword; but as well
might an infant buried alive attempt to lift his gravestone. Carver Doone,
with his great arms wrapped around the slim gay body, smiled (as I saw by
the flash from heaven) at the poor young face turned up to him; then (as a
nurse bears off a child, who is loath to go to bed), he lifted the youth from
his feet, and bore him away into the darkness.
“I was young then. I am older now; older by ten years, in thought,
although it is not a twelvemonth since. If that black deed were done again, I
could follow, and could combat it, could throw weak arms on the murderer,
and strive to be murdered also. I am now at home with violence; and no
dark death surprises me.
“But, being as I was that night, the horror overcame me. The crash of
thunder overhead, the last despairing look, the death-piece framed with
blaze of lightning—my young heart was so affrighted that I could not gasp.
My breath went from me, and I knew not where I was, or who, or what.
Only that I lay, and cowered, under great trees full of thunder; and could
neither count, nor moan, nor have my feet to help me.
“Yet hearkening, as a coward does, through the brushing of the wind,
and echo of far noises, I heard a sharp sound as of iron, and a fall of heavy
wood. No unmanly shriek came with it, neither cry for mercy. Carver
Doone knows what it was; and so did Alan Brandir.”
Here Lorna Doone could tell no more, being overcome with weeping.
Only through her tears she whispered, as a thing too bad to tell, that she had
seen that giant Carver, in a few days afterwards, smoking a little round
brown stick, like those of her poor cousin. I could not press her any more
with questions, or for clearness; although I longed very much to know
whether she had spoken of it to her grandfather or the Counsellor. But she
was now in such condition, both of mind and body, from the force of her
own fear multiplied by telling it, that I did nothing more than coax her, at a
distance humbly; and so that she could see that some one was at least afraid
of her. This (although I knew not women in those days, as now I do, and
never shall know much of it), this, I say, so brought her round, that all her
fear was now for me, and how to get me safely off, without mischance to
any one. And sooth to say, in spite of longing just to see if Master Carver
could have served me such a trick—as it grew towards the dusk, I was not

best pleased to be there; for it seemed a lawless place, and some of Lorna's
fright stayed with me as I talked it away from her.

CHAPTER XXII
After hearing that tale from Lorna, I went
home in sorry spirits, having added fear for her, and
misery about, to all my other ailments. And was it
not quite certain now that she, being owned full
cousin to a peer and lord of Scotland (although he
was a dead one), must have nought to do with me, a
yeoman's son, and bound to be the father of more
yeomen? I had been very sorry when first I heard
about that poor young popinjay, and would gladly
have fought hard for him; but now it struck me that
after all he had no right to be there, prowling (as it
were) for Lorna, without any invitation: and we farmers love not trespass.
Still, if I had seen the thing, I must have tried to save him.
Moreover, I was greatly vexed with my own hesitation, stupidity, or
shyness, or whatever else it was, which had held me back from saying, ere
she told her story, what was in my heart to say, videlicet, that I must die
unless she let me love her. Not that I was fool enough to think that she
would answer me according to my liking, or begin to care about me for a
long time yet; if indeed she ever should, which I hardly dared to hope. But
that I had heard from men more skillful in the matter that it is wise to be in
time, that so the maids may begin to think, when they know that they are
thought of. And, to tell the truth, I had bitter fears, on account of her
wondrous beauty, lest some young fellow of higher birth and finer parts,
and finish, might steal in before poor me, and cut me out altogether.
Thinking of which, I used to double my great fist, without knowing it, and
keep it in my pocket ready.
But the worst of all was this, that in my great dismay and anguish to
see Lorna weeping so, I had promised not to cause her any further trouble
from anxiety and fear of harm. And this, being brought to practice, meant
that I was not to show myself within the precincts of Glen Doone, for at
least another month. Unless indeed (as I contrived to edge into the
agreement) anything should happen to increase her present trouble and

every day's uneasiness. In that case, she was to throw a dark mantle, or
covering of some sort, over a large white stone which hung within the
entrance to her retreat—I mean the outer entrance—and which, though
unseen from the valley itself, was (as I had observed) conspicuous from the
height where I stood with Uncle Reuben.
Now coming home so sad and weary, yet trying to console myself with
the thought that love o'erleapeth rank, and must still be lord of all, I found a
shameful thing going on, which made me very angry. For it needs must
happen that young Marwood de Whichehalse, only son of the Baron, riding
home that very evening, from chasing of the Exmoor bustards, with his
hounds and serving-men, should take the short cut through our farmyard,
and being dry from his exercise, should come and ask for drink. And it
needs must happen also that there should be none to give it to him but my
sister Annie. I more than suspect that he had heard some report of our
Annie's comeliness, and had a mind to satisfy himself upon the subject.
Now, as he took the large ox-horn of our quarantine-apple cider (which we
always keep apart from the rest, being too good except for the quality), he
let his fingers dwell on Annie's, by some sort of accident, while he lifted his
beaver gallantly, and gazed on her face in the light from the west. Then
what did Annie do (as she herself told me afterwards) but make her very
best curtsey to him, being pleased that he was pleased with her, while she
thought what a fine young man he was and so much breeding about him!
And in truth he was a dark, handsome fellow, hasty, reckless, and
changeable, with a look of sad destiny in his black eyes that would make
any woman pity him. What he was thinking of our Annie is not for me to
say, although I may think that you could not have found another such
maiden on Exmoor, except (of course) my Lorna.
Though young Squire Marwood was so
thirsty, he spent much time over his cider, or at any
rate over the ox-horn, and he made many bows to
Annie, and drank health to all the family, and
spoke of me as if I had been his very best friend at
Blundell's; whereas he knew well enough all the
time that we had nought to say to one another; he
being three years older, and therefore of course
disdaining me. But while he was casting about
perhaps for some excuse to stop longer, and Annie

was beginning to fear lest mother should come after her, or Eliza be at the
window, or Betty up in pigs' house, suddenly there came up to them, as if
from the very heart of the earth, that long, low, hollow, mysterious sound
which I spoke of in winter.
The young man started in his saddle, let the horn fall on the horse-
steps, and gazed all around in wonder; while as for Annie, she turned like a
ghost, and tried to slam the door, but failed through the violence of her
trembling; (for never till now had any one heard it so close at hand as you
might say) or in the mere fall of the twilight. And by this time there was no
man, at least in our parish, but knew—for the Parson himself had told us so
—that it was the devil groaning because the Doones were too many for him.
Marwood de Whichehalse was not so alarmed but what he saw a fine
opportunity. He leaped from his horse, and laid hold of dear Annie in a
highly comforting manner; and she never would tell us about it (being so
shy and modest), whether in breathing his comfort to her he tried to take
some from her pure lips. I hope he did not, because that to me would seem
not the deed of a gentleman, and he was of good old family.
At this very moment, who should come into the end of the passage
upon them but the heavy writer of these doings I, John Ridd myself, and
walking the faster, it may be, on account of the noise I mentioned. I entered
the house with some wrath upon me at seeing the gazehounds in the yard;
for it seems a cruel thing to me to harass the birds in the breeding-time. And
to my amazement there I saw Squire Marwood among the milk-pans with
his arm around our Annie's waist, and Annie all blushing and coaxing him
off, for she was not come to scold yet.
Perhaps I was wrong; God knows, and if I was, no doubt I shall pay for
it; but I gave him the flat of my hand on his head, and down he went in the
thick of the milk-pans. He would have had my fist, I doubt, but for having
been at school with me; and after that it is like enough he would never have
spoken another word. As it was, he lay stunned, with the cream running on
him; while I took poor Annie up and carried her in to mother, who had
heard the noise and was frightened.
Concerning this matter I asked no more, but held myself ready to bear
it out in any form convenient, feeling that I had done my duty, and cared not
for the consequence; only for several days dear Annie seemed frightened
rather than grateful. But the oddest result of it was that Eliza, who had so

despised me, and made very rude verses about me, now came trying to sit
on my knee, and kiss me, and give me the best of the pan. However, I
would not allow it, because I hate sudden changes.
Another thing also astonished me—namely, a beautiful letter from
Marwood de Whichehalse himself (sent by a groom soon afterwards), in
which he apologised to me, as if I had been his equal, for his rudeness to
my sister, which was not intended in the least, but came of their common
alarm at the moment, and his desire to comfort her. Also he begged
permission to come and see me, as an old schoolfellow, and set everything
straight between us, as should be among honest Blundellites.
All this was so different to my idea of fighting out a quarrel, when
once it is upon a man, that I knew not what to make of it, but bowed to
higher breeding. Only one thing I resolved upon, that come when he would
he should not see Annie. And to do my sister justice, she had no desire to
see him.
However, I am too easy, there is no doubt of that, being very quick to
forgive a man, and very slow to suspect, unless he hath once lied to me.
Moreover, as to Annie, it had always seemed to me (much against my
wishes) that some shrewd love of a waiting sort was between her and Tom
Faggus: and though Tom had made his fortune now, and everybody
respected him, of course he was not to be compared, in that point of
respectability, with those people who hanged the robbers when fortune
turned against them.
So young Squire Marwood came again, as though I had never smitten
him, and spoke of it in as light a way as if we were still at school together. It
was not in my nature, of course, to keep any anger against him; and I knew
what a condescension it was for him to visit us. And it is a very grievous
thing, which touches small landowners, to see an ancient family day by day
decaying: and when we heard that Ley Barton itself, and all the Manor of
Lynton were under a heavy mortgage debt to John Lovering of Weare-
Gifford, there was not much, in our little way, that we would not gladly do
or suffer for the benefit of De Whichehalse.
Meanwhile the work of the farm was toward, and every day gave us
more ado to dispose of what itself was doing. For after the long dry
skeltering wind of March and part of April, there had been a fortnight of
soft wet; and when the sun came forth again, hill and valley, wood and

meadow, could not make enough of him. Many a spring have I seen since
then, but never yet two springs alike, and never one so beautiful. Or was it
that my love came forth and touched the world with beauty?

The spring was in our valley now; creeping first for shelter shyly in the
pause of the blustering wind. There the lambs came bleating to her, and the
orchis lifted up, and the thin dead leaves of clover lay for the new ones to

spring through. There the stiffest things that sleep, the stubby oak, and the
saplin'd beech, dropped their brown defiance to her, and prepared for a soft
reply.
While her over-eager children (who had started forth to meet her,
through the frost and shower of sleet), catkin'd hazel, gold-gloved withy,
youthful elder, and old woodbine, with all the tribe of good hedge-climbers
(who must hasten while haste they may)—was there one of them that did
not claim the merit of coming first?
There she stayed and held her revel, as soon as the fear of frost was
gone; all the air was a fount of freshness, and the earth of gladness, and the
laughing waters prattled of the kindness of the sun. But all this made it
much harder for us, plying the hoe and rake, to keep the fields with room
upon them for the corn to tiller. The winter wheat was well enough, being
sturdy and strong-sided; but the spring wheat and the barley and the oats
were overrun by ill weeds growing faster. Therefore, as the old saying is,—

“Farmer, that thy wife may thrive,
Let not burr and burdock wive;
And if thou wouldst keep thy son,
See that bine and gith have none.”

So we were compelled to go down the field and up it, striking in and
out with care where the green blades hung together, so that each had space
to move in and to spread its roots abroad. And I do assure you now, though
you may not believe me, it was harder work to keep John Fry, Bill Dadds,
and Jem Slocomb all in a line and all moving nimbly to the tune of my own
tool, than it was to set out in the morning alone, and hoe half an acre by
dinner-time. For, instead of keeping the good ash moving, they would for
ever be finding something to look at or to speak of, or at any rate, to stop
with; blaming the shape of their tools perhaps, or talking about other
people's affairs; or, what was most irksome of all to me, taking advantage as
married men, and whispering jokes of no excellence about my having, or
having not, or being ashamed of a sweetheart. And this went so far at last
that I was forced to take two of them and knock their heads together; after
which they worked with a better will.
When we met together in the evening round the kitchen chimney-
place, after the men had had their supper and their heavy boots were gone,

my mother and Eliza would do their very utmost to learn what I was
thinking of. Not that we kept any fire now, after the crock was emptied; but
that we loved to see the ashes cooling, and to be together. At these times
Annie would never ask me any crafty questions (as Eliza did), but would sit
with her hair untwined, and one hand underneath her chin, sometimes
looking softly at me, as much as to say that she knew it all and I was no
worse off than she. But strange to say my mother dreamed not, even for an
instant, that it was possible for Annie to be thinking of such a thing. She
was so very good and quiet, and careful of the linen, and clever about the
cookery and fowls and bacon-curing, that people used to laugh, and say she
would never look at a bachelor until her mother ordered her. But I (perhaps
from my own condition and the sense of what it was) felt no certainty about
this, and even had another opinion, as was said before.
Often I was much inclined to speak to her about it, and put her on her
guard against the approaches of Tom Faggus; but I could not find how to
begin, and feared to make a breach between us; knowing that if her mind
was set, no words of mine would alter it; although they needs must grieve
her deeply. Moreover, I felt that, in this case, a certain homely Devonshire
proverb would come home to me; that one, I mean, which records that the
crock was calling the kettle smutty. Not, of course, that I compared my
innocent maid to a highwayman; but that Annie might think her worse, and
would be too apt to do so, if indeed she loved Tom Faggus. And our Cousin
Tom, by this time, was living a quiet and godly life; having retired almost
from the trade (except when he needed excitement, or came across public
officers), and having won the esteem of all whose purses were in his power.
Perhaps it is needless for me to say that all this time while my month
was running—or rather crawling, for never month went so slow as that with
me—neither weed, nor seed, nor cattle, nor my own mother's anxiety, nor
any care for my sister, kept me from looking once every day, and even
twice on a Sunday, for any sign of Lorna. For my heart was ever weary; in
the budding valleys, and by the crystal waters, looking at the lambs in fold,
or the heifers on the mill, labouring in trickled furrows, or among the
beaded blades; halting fresh to see the sun lift over the golden-vapoured
ridge; or doffing hat, from sweat of brow, to watch him sink in the low gray
sea; be it as it would of day, of work, or night, or slumber, it was a weary
heart I bore, and fear was on the brink of it.

All the beauty of the spring went for happy men to think of; all the
increase of the year was for other eyes to mark. Not a sign of any sunrise
for me from my fount of life, not a breath to stir the dead leaves fallen on
my heart's Spring.

CHAPTER XXIII
A ROYAL INVITATION

Although I had, for the most part, so very stout
an appetite, that none but mother saw any need of
encouraging me to eat, I could only manage one true
good meal in a day, at the time I speak of. Mother
was in despair at this, and tempted me with the
whole of the rack, and even talked of sending to
Porlock for a druggist who came there twice in a
week; and Annie spent all her time in cooking, and
even Lizzie sang songs to me; for she could sing
very sweetly. But my conscience told me that Betty
Muxworthy had some reason upon her side.
“Latt the young ozebird aloun, zay I. Makk zuch ado about un, wi'
hogs'-puddens, and hock-bits, and lambs'-mate, and whaten bradd indade,
and brewers' ale avore dinner-time, and her not to zit wi' no winder aupen—
draive me mad 'e doo, the ov'ee, zuch a passel of voouls. Do 'un good to
starve a bit; and takk zome on's wackedness out ov un.”
But mother did not see it so; and she even sent for Nicholas Snowe to
bring his three daughters with him, and have ale and cake in the parlour,
and advise about what the bees were doing, and when a swarm might be
looked for. Being vexed about this and having to stop at home nearly half
the evening, I lost good manners so much as to ask him (even in our own
house!) what he meant by not mending the swing-hurdle where the Lynn
stream flows from our land into his, and which he is bound to maintain. But
he looked at me in a superior manner, and said, “Business, young man, in
business time.”
I had other reason for being vexed with Farmer Nicholas just now, viz.
that I had heard a rumour, after church one Sunday—when most of all we
sorrow over the sins of one another—that Master Nicholas Snowe had been
seen to gaze tenderly at my mother, during a passage of the sermon,
wherein the parson spoke well and warmly about the duty of Christian love.

Now, putting one thing with another, about the bees, and about some ducks,
and a bullock with a broken knee-cap, I more than suspected that Farmer
Nicholas was casting sheep's eyes at my mother; not only to save all further
trouble in the matter of the hurdle, but to override me altogether upon the
difficult question of damming. And I knew quite well that John Fry's wife
never came to help at the washing without declaring that it was a sin for a
well-looking woman like mother, with plenty to live on, and only three
children, to keep all the farmers for miles around so unsettled in their minds
about her. Mother used to answer “Oh fie, Mistress Fry! be good enough to
mind your own business.” But we always saw that she smoothed her apron,
and did her hair up afterwards, and that Mistress Fry went home at night
with a cold pig's foot or a bowl of dripping.
Therefore, on that very night, as I could not
well speak to mother about it, without seeming
undutiful, after lighting the three young ladies—
for so in sooth they called themselves—all the
way home with our stable-lanthorn, I begged
good leave of Farmer Nicholas (who had hung
some way behind us) to say a word in private to
him, before he entered his own house.
“Wi' all the plaisure in laife, my zon,” he
answered very graciously, thinking perhaps that I
was prepared to speak concerning Sally.
“Now, Farmer Nicholas Snowe,” I said,
scarce knowing how to begin it, “you must promise not to be vexed with
me, for what I am going to say to you.”
“Vaxed wi' thee! Noo, noo, my lad. I 'ave a knowed thee too long for
that. And thy veyther were my best friend, afore thee. Never wronged his
neighbours, never spak an unkind word, never had no maneness in him. Tuk
a vancy to a nice young 'ooman, and never kep her in doubt about it, though
there wadn't mooch to zettle on her. Spak his maind laike a man, he did, and
right happy he were wi' her. Ah, well a day! Ah, God knoweth best. I never
shall zee his laike again. And he were the best judge of a dung-heap
anywhere in this county.”
“Well, Master Snowe,” I answered him, “it is very handsome of you to
say so. And now I am going to be like my father, I am going to speak my

mind.”
“Raight there, lad; raight enough, I reckon. Us has had enough of
pralimbinary.”
“Then what I want to say is this—I won't have any one courting my
mother.”
“Coortin' of thy mother, lad?” cried Farmer Snowe, with as much
amazement as if the thing were impossible; “why, who ever hath been
dooin' of it?”
“Yes, courting of my mother, sir. And you know best who comes doing
it.”
“Wull, wull! What will boys be up to next? Zhud a' thought herzelf
wor the proper judge. No thank 'ee, lad, no need of thy light. Know the wai
to my own door, at laste; and have a raight to goo there.” And he shut me
out without so much as offering me a drink of cider.
The next afternoon, when work was over, I had seen to the horses, for
now it was foolish to trust John Fry, because he had so many children, and
his wife had taken to scolding; and just as I was saying to myself that in
five days more my month would be done, and myself free to seek Lorna, a
man came riding up from the ford where the road goes through the Lynn
stream. As soon as I saw that it was not Tom Faggus, I went no farther to
meet him, counting that it must be some traveller bound for Brendon or
Cheriton, and likely enough he would come and beg for a draught of milk
or cider; and then on again, after asking the way.
But instead of that, he stopped at our gate, and stood up from his
saddle, and halloed as if he were somebody; and all the time he was
flourishing a white thing in the air, like the bands our parson weareth. So I
crossed the court-yard to speak with him.
“Service of the King!” he saith; “service of our lord the King! Come
hither, thou great yokel, at risk of fine and imprisonment.”
Although not pleased with this, I went to him, as became a loyal man;
quite at my leisure, however, for there is no man born who can hurry me,
though I hasten for any woman.
“Plover Barrows farm!” said he; “God only knows how tired I be. Is
there any where in this cursed county a cursed place called Plover Barrows
farm? For last twenty mile at least they told me 'twere only half a mile

farther, or only just round corner. Now tell me that, and I fain would thwack
thee if thou wert not thrice my size.”
“Sir,” I replied, “you shall not have the trouble. This is Plover's
Barrows farm, and you are kindly welcome. Sheep's kidneys is for supper,
and the ale got bright from the tapping. But why do you think ill of us? We
like not to be cursed so.”
“Nay, I think no ill,” he said; “sheep's kidneys is good, uncommon
good, if they do them without burning. But I be so galled in the saddle ten
days, and never a comely meal of it. And when they hear 'King's service'
cried, they give me the worst of everything. All the way down from
London, I had a rogue of a fellow in front of me, eating the fat of the land
before me, and every one bowing down to him. He could go three miles to
my one though he never changed his horse. He might have robbed me at
any minute, if I had been worth the trouble. A red mare he rideth, strong in
the loins, and pointed quite small in the head. I shall live to see him hanged
yet.”
All this time he was riding across the straw of our courtyard, getting
his weary legs out of the leathers, and almost afraid to stand yet. A coarse-
grained, hard-faced man he was, some forty years of age or so, and of
middle height and stature. He was dressed in a dark brown riding suit, none
the better for Exmoor mud, but fitting him very differently from the fashion
of our tailors. Across the holsters lay his cloak, made of some red skin, and
shining from the sweating of the horse. As I looked down on his stiff bright
head-piece, small quick eyes and black needly beard, he seemed to despise
me (too much, as I thought) for a mere ignoramus and country bumpkin.
“Annie, have down the cut ham,” I shouted, for my sister was come to
the door by chance, or because of the sound of a horse in the road, “and cut
a few rashers of hung deer's meat. There is a gentleman come to sup, Annie.
And fetch the hops out of the tap with a skewer that it may run more
sparkling.”
“I wish I may go to a place never meant for me,” said my new friend,
now wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his brown riding coat, “if ever I
fell among such good folk. You are the right sort, and no error therein. All
this shall go in your favour greatly, when I make deposition. At least, I
mean, if it be as good in the eating as in the hearing. 'Tis a supper quite fit

for Tom Faggus himself, the man who hath stolen my victuals so. And that
hung deer's meat, now is it of the red deer running wild in these parts?”
“To be sure it is, sir,” I answered; “where should we get any other?”
“Right, right, you are right, my son. I have heard that the flavour is
marvellous. Some of them came and scared me so, in the fog of the
morning, that I hungered for them ever since. Ha, ha, I saw their haunches.
But the young lady will not forget—art sure she will not forget it?”
“You may trust her to forget nothing, sir, that may tempt a guest to his
comfort.”
“In faith, then, I will leave my horse in your hands, and be off for it.
Half the pleasure of the mouth is in the nose beforehand. But stay, almost I
forgot my business, in the hurry which thy tongue hath spread through my
lately despairing belly. Hungry I am, and sore of body, from my heels right
upward, and sorest in front of my doublet, yet may I not rest nor bite barley-
bread, until I have seen and touched John Ridd. God grant that he be not far
away; I must eat my saddle, if it be so.”
“Have no fear, good sir,” I answered; “you have seen and touched John
Ridd. I am he, and not one likely to go beneath a bushel.”
“It would take a large bushel to hold thee, John Ridd. In the name of
the King, His Majesty, Charles the Second, these presents!”
He touched me with the white thing which I had first seen him waving,
and which I now beheld to be sheepskin, such as they call parchment. It was
tied across with cord, and fastened down in every corner with unsightly
dabs of wax. By order of the messenger (for I was over-frightened now to
think of doing anything), I broke enough of seals to keep an Easter ghost
from rising; and there I saw my name in large; God grant such another
shock may never befall me in my old age.
“Read, my son; read, thou great fool, if indeed thou canst read,” said
the officer to encourage me; “there is nothing to kill thee, boy, and my
supper will be spoiling. Stare not at me so, thou fool; thou art big enough to
eat me; read, read, read.”
“If you please, sir, what is your name?” I asked; though why I asked
him I know not, except from fear of witchcraft.
“Jeremy Stickles is my name, lad, nothing more than a poor apparitor
of the worshipful Court of King's Bench. And at this moment a starving

one, and no supper for me unless thou
wilt read.”
Being compelled in this way, I read
pretty nigh as follows; not that I give the
whole of it, but only the gist and the
emphasis,—
“To our good subject, John Ridd,
etc.”—describing me ever so much
better than I knew myself—“by these
presents, greeting. These are to require
thee, in the name of our lord the King, to
appear in person before the Right
Worshipful, the Justices of His Majesty's
Bench at Westminster, laying aside all
thine own business, and there to deliver such evidence as is within thy
cognisance, touching certain matters whereby the peace of our said lord the
King, and the well-being of this realm, is, are, or otherwise may be
impeached, impugned, imperilled, or otherwise detrimented. As witness
these presents.” And then there were four seals, and then a signature I could
not make out, only that it began with a J, and ended with some other
writing, done almost in a circle. Underneath was added in a different
handwriting “Charges will be borne. The matter is full urgent.”
The messenger watched me, while I read so much as I could read of it;
and he seemed well pleased with my surprise, because he had expected it.
Then, not knowing what else to do, I looked again at the cover, and on the
top of it I saw, “Ride, Ride, Ride! On His Gracious Majesty's business; spur
and spare not.”
It may be supposed by all who know me, that I was taken hereupon
with such a giddiness in my head and noisiness in my ears, that I was forced
to hold by the crook driven in below the thatch for holding of the hay-rakes.
There was scarcely any sense left in me, only that the thing was come by
power of Mother Melldrum, because I despised her warning, and had again
sought Lorna. But the officer was grieved for me, and the danger to his
supper.
“My son, be not afraid,” he said; “we are not going to skin thee. Only
thou tell all the truth, and it shall be—but never mind, I will tell thee all

about it, and how to come out harmless, if I find thy victuals good, and no
delay in serving them.”
“We do our best, sir, without bargain,” said I, “to please our visitors.”
But when my mother saw that parchment (for we could not keep it
from her) she fell away into her favourite bed of stock gilly-flowers, which
she had been tending; and when we brought her round again, did nothing
but exclaim against the wickedness of the age and people. “It was useless to
tell her; she knew what it was, and so should all the parish know. The King
had heard what her son was, how sober, and quiet, and diligent, and the
strongest young man in England; and being himself such a reprobate—God
forgive her for saying so—he could never rest till he got poor Johnny, and
made him as dissolute as himself. And if he did that”—here mother went off
into a fit of crying; and Annie minded her face, while Lizzie saw that her
gown was in comely order.
But the character of the King improved, when Master Jeremy Stickles
(being really moved by the look of it, and no bad man after all) laid it
clearly before my mother that the King on his throne was unhappy, until he
had seen John Ridd. That the fame of John had gone so far, and his size, and
all his virtues—that verily by the God who made him, the King was
overcome with it.
Then mother lay back in her garden chair, and smiled upon the whole
of us, and most of all on Jeremy; looking only shyly on me, and speaking
through some break of tears. “His Majesty shall have my John; His Majesty
is very good: but only for a fortnight. I want no titles for him. Johnny is
enough for me; and Master John for the working men.”
Now though my mother was so willing that I should go to London,
expecting great promotion and high glory for me, I myself was deeply gone
into the pit of sorrow. For what would Lorna think of me? Here was the
long month just expired, after worlds of waiting; there would be her lovely
self, peeping softly down the glen, and fearing to encourage me; yet there
would be nobody else, and what an insult to her! Dwelling upon this, and
seeing no chance of escape from it, I could not find one wink of sleep;
though Jeremy Stickles (who slept close by) snored loud enough to spare
me some. For I felt myself to be, as it were, in a place of some importance;
in a situation of trust, I may say; and bound not to depart from it. For who
could tell what the King might have to say to me about the Doones—and I

felt that they were at the bottom of this strange appearance—or what His
Majesty might think, if after receiving a message from him (trusty under so
many seals) I were to violate his faith in me as a churchwarden's son, and
falsely spread his words abroad?
Perhaps I was not wise in building such a wall of scruples.
Nevertheless, all that was there, and weighed upon me heavily. And at last I
made up my mind to this, that even Lorna must not know the reason of my
going, neither anything about it; but that she might know I was gone a long
way from home, and perhaps be sorry for it. Now how was I to let her know
even that much of the matter, without breaking compact?
Puzzling on this, I fell asleep, after the proper time to get up; nor was I
to be seen at breakfast time; and mother (being quite strange to that) was
very uneasy about it. But Master Stickles assured her that the King's writ
often had that effect, and the symptom was a good one.
“Now, Master Stickles, when must we start?” I asked him, as he
lounged in the yard gazing at our turkey poults picking and running in the
sun to the tune of their father's gobble. “Your horse was greatly foundered,
sir, and is hardly fit for the road to-day; and Smiler was sledding yesterday
all up the higher Cleve; and none of the rest can carry me.”
“In a few more years,” replied the King's officer, contemplating me
with much satisfaction; “'twill be a cruelty to any horse to put thee on his
back, John.”
Master Stickles, by this time, was quite familiar with us, calling me
“Jack,” and Eliza “Lizzie,” and what I liked the least of all, our pretty Annie
“Nancy.”
“That will be as God pleases, sir,” I answered him, rather sharply; “and
the horse that suffers will not be thine. But I wish to know when we must
start upon our long travel to London town. I perceive that the matter is of
great despatch and urgency.”
“To be sure, so it is, my son. But I see a yearling turkey there, him I
mean with the hop in his walk, who (if I know aught of fowls) would roast
well to-morrow. Thy mother must have preparation: it is no more than
reasonable. Now, have that turkey killed to-night (for his fatness makes me
long for him), and we will have him for dinner to-morrow, with, perhaps,
one of his brethren; and a few more collops of red deer's flesh for supper,

and then on the Friday morning, with the grace of God, we will set our
faces to the road, upon His Majesty's business.”
“Nay, but good sir,” I asked with some trembling, so eager was I to see
Lorna; “if His Majesty's business will keep till Friday, may it not keep until
Monday? We have a litter of sucking-pigs, excellently choice and white, six
weeks old, come Friday. There be too many for the sow, and one of them
needeth roasting. Think you not it would be a pity to leave the women to
carve it?”
“My son Jack,” replied Master Stickles, “never was I in such quarters
yet: and God forbid that I should be so unthankful to Him as to hurry away.
And now I think on it, Friday is not a day upon which pious people love to
commence an enterprise. I will choose the young pig to-morrow at noon, at
which time they are wont to gambol; and we will celebrate his birthday by
carving him on Friday. After that we will gird our loins, and set forth early
on Saturday.”
Now this was little better to me than if we had set forth at once.
Sunday being the very first day upon which it would be honourable for me
to enter Glen Doone. But though I tried every possible means with Master
Jeremy Stickles, offering him the choice for dinner of every beast that was
on the farm, he durst not put off our departure later than the Saturday. And
nothing else but love of us and of our hospitality would have so persuaded
him to remain with us till then. Therefore now my only chance of seeing
Lorna, before I went, lay in watching from the cliff and espying her, or a
signal from her.
This, however, I did in vain, until my eyes were weary and often
would delude themselves with hope of what they ached for. But though I
lay hidden behind the trees upon the crest of the stony fall, and waited so
quiet that the rabbits and squirrels played around me, and even the keen-
eyed weasel took me for a trunk of wood—it was all as one; no cast of
colour changed the white stone, whose whiteness now was hateful to me;
nor did wreath or skirt of maiden break the loneliness of the vale.

CHAPTER XXIV
A SAFE PASS FOR KING'S MESSENGER

A journey to London seemed to us in those
bygone days as hazardous and dark an adventure as
could be forced on any man. I mean, of course, a
poor man; for to a great nobleman, with ever so
many outriders, attendants, and retainers, the risk
was not so great, unless the highwaymen knew of
their coming beforehand, and so combined against
them. To a poor man, however, the risk was not so
much from those gentlemen of the road as from the
more ignoble footpads, and the landlords of the
lesser hostels, and the loose unguarded soldiers,
over and above the pitfalls and the quagmires of the
way; so that it was hard to settle, at the first outgoing whether a man were
wise to pray more for his neck or for his head.
But nowadays it is very different. Not that highway-men are scarce, in
this the reign of our good Queen Anne; for in truth they thrive as well as
ever, albeit they deserve it not, being less upright and courteous—but that
the roads are much improved, and the growing use of stage-waggons (some
of which will travel as much as forty miles in a summer day) has turned our
ancient ideas of distance almost upside down; and I doubt whether God be
pleased with our flying so fast away from Him. However, that is not my
business; nor does it lie in my mouth to speak very strongly upon the
subject, seeing how much I myself have done towards making of roads
upon Exmoor.
To return to my story (and, in truth, I lose that road too often), it would
have taken ten King's messengers to get me away from Plover's Barrows
without one goodbye to Lorna, but for my sense of the trust and reliance
which His Majesty had reposed in me. And now I felt most bitterly how the
very arrangements which seemed so wise, and indeed ingenious, may by the
force of events become our most fatal obstacles. For lo! I was blocked

entirely from going to see Lorna; whereas we should have fixed it so that I
as well might have the power of signalling my necessity.
It was too late now to think of that; and so I made up my mind at last
to keep my honour on both sides, both to the King and to the maiden,
although I might lose everything except a heavy heart for it. And indeed,
more hearts than mine were heavy; for when it came to the tug of parting,
my mother was like, and so was Annie, to break down altogether. But I bade
them be of good cheer, and smiled in the briskest manner upon them, and
said that I should be back next week as one of His Majesty's greatest
captains, and told them not to fear me then. Upon which they smiled at the
idea of ever being afraid of me, whatever dress I might have on; and so I
kissed my hand once more, and rode away very bravely. But bless your
heart, I could no more have done so than flown all the way to London if
Jeremy Stickles had not been there.
And not to take too much credit to myself in this matter, I must confess
that when we were come to the turn in the road where the moor begins, and
whence you see the last of the yard, and the ricks and the poultry round
them and can (by knowing the place) obtain a glance of the kitchen window
under the walnut-tree, it went so hard with me just here that I even made
pretence of a stone in ancient Smiler's shoe, to dismount, and to bend my
head awhile. Then, knowing that those I had left behind would be watching
to see the last of me, and might have false hopes of my coming back, I
mounted again with all possible courage, and rode after Jeremy Stickles.

Jeremy, seeing how much I was down, did his best to keep me up with
jokes, and tales, and light discourse, until, before we had ridden a league, I
began to long to see the things he was describing. The air, the weather, and
the thoughts of going to a wondrous place, added to the fine company—at
least so Jeremy said it was—of a man who knew all London, made me feel
that I should be ungracious not to laugh a little. And being very simple then
I laughed no more a little, but something quite considerable (though free
from consideration) at the strange things Master Stickles told me, and his

strange way of telling them. And so we became very excellent friends, for
he was much pleased with my laughing.
Not wishing to thrust myself more forward than need be in this
narrative, I have scarcely thought it becoming or right to speak of my own
adornments. But now, what with the brave clothes I had on, and the better
ones still that were packed up in the bag behind the saddle, it is almost
beyond me to forbear saying that I must have looked very pleasing. And
many a time I wished, going along, that Lorna could only be here and there,
watching behind a furze-bush, looking at me, and wondering how much my
clothes had cost. For mother would have no stint in the matter, but had
assembled at our house, immediately upon knowledge of what was to be
about London, every man known to be a good stitcher upon our side of
Exmoor. And for three days they had worked their best, without stint of beer
or cider, according to the constitution of each. The result, so they all
declared, was such as to create admiration, and defy competition in London.
And to me it seemed that they were quite right; though Jeremy Stickles
turned up his nose, and feigned to be deaf in the business.
Now be that matter as you please—for the point is not worth arguing—
certain it is that my appearance was better than it had been before. For
being in the best clothes, one tries to look and to act (so far as may be) up to
the quality of them. Not only for the fear of soiling them, but that they
enlarge a man's perception of his value. And it strikes me that our sins arise,
partly from disdain of others, but mainly from contempt of self, both
working the despite of God. But men of mind may not be measured by such
paltry rule as this.
By dinner-time we arrived at Porlock, and dined with my old friend,
Master Pooke, now growing rich and portly. For though we had plenty of
victuals with us we were not to begin upon them, until all chance of
victualling among our friends was left behind. And during that first day we
had no need to meddle with our store at all; for as had been settled before
we left home, we lay that night at Dunster in the house of a worthy tanner,
first cousin to my mother, who received us very cordially, and undertook to
return old Smiler to his stable at Plover's Barrows, after one day's rest.
Thence we hired to Bridgwater; and from Bridgwater on to Bristowe,
breaking the journey between the two. But although the whole way was so
new to me, and such a perpetual source of conflict, that the remembrance

still abides with me, as if it were but yesterday, I must not be so long in
telling as it was in travelling, or you will wish me farther; both because
Lorna was nothing there, and also because a man in our neighbourhood had
done the whole of it since my time, and feigns to think nothing of it.
However, one thing, in common justice to a person who has been traduced,
I am bound to mention. And this is, that being two of us, and myself of such
magnitude, we never could have made our journey without either fight or
running, but for the free pass which dear Annie, by some means (I know not
what), had procured from Master Faggus. And when I let it be known, by
some hap, that I was the own cousin of Tom Faggus, and honoured with his
society, there was not a house upon the road but was proud to entertain me,
in spite of my fellow-traveller, bearing the red badge of the King.
“I will keep this close, my son Jack,” he said, having stripped it off
with a carving-knife; “your flag is the best to fly. The man who starved me
on the way down, the same shall feed me fat going home.”
Therefore we pursued our way, in excellent condition, having thriven
upon the credit of that very popular highwayman, and being surrounded
with regrets that he had left the profession, and sometimes begged to
intercede that he might help the road again. For all the landlords on the road
declared that now small ale was drunk, nor much of spirits called for,
because the farmers need not prime to meet only common riders, neither
were these worth the while to get drunk with afterwards. Master Stickles
himself undertook, as an officer of the King's Justices to plead this case
with Squire Faggus (as everybody called him now), and to induce him, for
the general good, to return to his proper ministry.
It was a long and weary journey, although the roads are wondrous
good on the farther side of Bristowe, and scarcely any man need be bogged,
if he keeps his eyes well open, save, perhaps, in Berkshire. In consequence
of the pass we had, and the vintner's knowledge of it, we only met two
public riders, one of whom made off straightway when he saw my
companion's pistols and the stout carbine I bore; and the other came to a
parley with us, and proved most kind and affable, when he knew himself in
the presence of the cousin of Squire Faggus. “God save you, gentlemen,” he
cried, lifting his hat politely; “many and many a happy day I have worked
this road with him. Such times will never be again. But commend me to his
love and prayers. King my name is, and King my nature. Say that, and none

will harm you.” And so he made off down the hill, being a perfect
gentleman, and a very good horse he was riding.
The night was falling very thick by the time we were come to Tyburn,
and here the King's officer decided that it would be wise to halt, because the
way was unsafe by night across the fields to Charing village. I for my part
was nothing loth, and preferred to see London by daylight.
And after all, it was not worth seeing, but a very hideous and dirty
place, not at all like Exmoor. Some of the shops were very fine, and the
signs above them finer still, so that I was never weary of standing still to
look at them. But in doing this there was no ease; for before one could
begin almost to make out the meaning of them, either some of the wayfarers
would bustle and scowl, and draw their swords, or the owner, or his
apprentice boys, would rush out and catch hold of me, crying, “Buy, buy,
buy! What d'ye lack, what d'ye lack? Buy, buy, buy!” At first I mistook the
meaning of this—for so we pronounce the word “boy” upon Exmoor—and
I answered with some indignation, “Sirrah, I am no boy now, but a man of
one-and-twenty years; and as for lacking, I lack naught from thee, except
what thou hast not—good manners.”
The only things that pleased me much, were the river Thames, and the
hall and church of Westminster, where there are brave things to be seen, and
braver still to think about. But whenever I wandered in the streets, what
with the noise the people made, the number of the coaches, the running of
the footmen, the swaggering of great courtiers, and the thrusting aside of
everybody, many and many a time I longed to be back among the sheep
again, for fear of losing temper. They were welcome to the wall for me, as I
took care to tell them, for I could stand without the wall, which perhaps was
more than they could do. Though I said this with the best intention,
meaning no discourtesy, some of them were vexed at it; and one young lord,
being flushed with drink, drew his sword and made at me. But I struck it up
with my holly stick, so that it flew on the roof of a house, then I took him
by the belt with one hand, and laid him in the kennel. This caused some
little disturbance; but none of the rest saw fit to try how the matter might be
with them.
Now this being the year of our Lord 1683, more than nine years and a
half since the death of my father, and the beginning of this history, all
London was in a great ferment about the dispute between the Court of the

King and the City. The King, or rather perhaps his party (for they said that
His Majesty cared for little except to have plenty of money and spend it),
was quite resolved to be supreme in the appointment of the chief officers of
the corporation. But the citizens maintained that (under their charter) this
right lay entirely with themselves; upon which a writ was issued against
them for forfeiture of their charter; and the question was now being tried in
the court of His Majesty's bench.
This seemed to occupy all the attention of the judges, and my case
(which had appeared so urgent) was put off from time to time, while the
Court and the City contended. And so hot was the conflict and hate between
them, that a sheriff had been fined by the King in 100,000 pounds, and a
former lord mayor had even been sentenced to the pillory, because he would
not swear falsely. Hence the courtiers and the citizens scarce could meet in
the streets with patience, or without railing and frequent blows.
Now although I heard so much of this matter, for nothing else was
talked of, and it seeming to me more important even than the
churchwardenship of Oare, I could not for the life of me tell which side I
should take to. For all my sense of position, and of confidence reposed in
me, and of my father's opinions, lay heavily in one scale, while all my
reason and my heart went down plump against injustice, and seemed to win
the other scale. Even so my father had been, at the breaking out of the civil
war, when he was less than my age now, and even less skilled in politics;
and my mother told me after this, when she saw how I myself was
doubting, and vexed with myself for doing so, that my father used to thank
God often that he had not been called upon to take one side or other, but
might remain obscure and quiet. And yet he always considered himself to
be a good, sound Royalist.
But now as I stayed there, only desirous to be heard and to get away,
and scarcely even guessing yet what was wanted of me (for even Jeremy
Stickles knew not, or pretended not to know), things came to a dreadful
pass between the King and all the people who dared to have an opinion. For
about the middle of June, the judges gave their sentence, that the City of
London had forfeited its charter, and that its franchise should be taken into
the hands of the King. Scarcely was this judgment forth, and all men hotly
talking of it, when a far worse thing befell. News of some great conspiracy
was spread at every corner, and that a man in the malting business had tried

to take up the brewer's work, and lop the King and the Duke of York.
Everybody was shocked at this, for the King himself was not disliked so
much as his advisers; but everybody was more than shocked, grieved
indeed to the heart with pain, at hearing that Lord William Russell and Mr.
Algernon Sidney had been seized and sent to the Tower of London, upon a
charge of high treason.
Having no knowledge of these great men, nor of the matter how far it
was true, I had not very much to say about either of them or it; but this
silence was not shared (although the ignorance may have been) by the
hundreds of people around me. Such a commotion was astir, such universal
sense of wrong, and stern resolve to right it, that each man grasped his
fellow's hand, and led him into the vintner's. Even I, although at that time
given to excess in temperance, and afraid of the name of cordials, was hard
set (I do assure you) not to be drunk at intervals without coarse discourtesy.
However, that (as Betty Muxworthy used to say, when argued down,
and ready to take the mop for it) is neither here nor there. I have naught to
do with great history and am sorry for those who have to write it; because
they are sure to have both friends and enemies in it, and cannot act as they
would towards them, without damage to their own consciences.
But as great events draw little ones, and the rattle of the churn decides
the uncertainty of the flies, so this movement of the town, and eloquence,
and passion had more than I guessed at the time, to do with my own little
fortunes. For in the first place it was fixed (perhaps from down right
contumely, because the citizens loved him so) that Lord Russell should be
tried neither at Westminster nor at Lincoln's Inn, but at the Court of Old
Bailey, within the precincts of the city. This kept me hanging on much
longer; because although the good nobleman was to be tried by the Court of
Common Pleas, yet the officers of King's Bench, to whom I daily applied
myself, were in counsel with their fellows, and put me off from day to day.
Now I had heard of the law's delays, which the greatest of all great
poets (knowing much of the law himself, as indeed of everything) has
specially mentioned, when not expected, among the many ills of life. But I
never thought at my years to have such bitter experience of the evil; and it
seemed to me that if the lawyers failed to do their duty, they ought to pay
people for waiting upon them, instead of making them pay for it. But here I
was, now in the second month living at my own charges in the house of a

worthy fellmonger at the sign of the Seal and Squirrel, abutting upon the
Strand road which leads from Temple Bar to Charing. Here I did very well
indeed, having a mattress of good skin-dressings, and plenty to eat every
day of my life, but the butter was something to cry “but” thrice at
(according to a conceit of our school days), and the milk must have come
from cows driven to water. However, these evils were light compared with
the heavy bill sent up to me every Saturday afternoon; and knowing how
my mother had pinched to send me nobly to London, and had told me to
spare for nothing, but live bravely with the best of them, the tears very
nearly came into my eyes, as I thought, while I ate, of so robbing her.
At length, being quite at the end of my money, and seeing no other
help for it, I determined to listen to clerks no more, but force my way up to
the Justices, and insist upon being heard by them, or discharged from my
recognisance. For so they had termed the bond or deed which I had been
forced to execute, in the presence of a chief clerk or notary, the very day
after I came to London. And the purport of it was, that on pain of a heavy
fine or escheatment, I would hold myself ready and present, to give
evidence when called upon. Having delivered me up to sign this, Jeremy
Stickles was quit of me, and went upon other business, not but what he was
kind and good to me, when his time and pursuits allowed of it.

CHAPTER XXV
A GREAT MAN ATTENDS TO BUSINESS

Having seen Lord Russell murdered in
the fields of Lincoln's Inn, or rather having
gone to see it, but turned away with a
sickness and a bitter flood of tears—for a
whiter and a nobler neck never fell before
low beast—I strode away towards
Westminster, cured of half my indignation at
the death of Charles the First. Many people
hurried past me, chiefly of the more tender
sort, revolting at the butchery. In their
ghastly faces, as they turned them back, lest
the sight should be coming after them, great
sorrow was to be seen, and horror, and pity,
and some anger.
In Westminster Hall I found nobody; not even the crowd of crawling
varlets, who used to be craving evermore for employment or for payment. I
knocked at three doors, one after other, of lobbies going out of it, where I
had formerly seen some officers and people pressing in and out, but for my
trouble I took nothing, except some thumps from echo. And at last an old
man told me that all the lawyers were gone to see the result of their own
works, in the fields of Lincoln's Inn.
However, in a few days' time, I had better fortune; for the court was
sitting and full of business, to clear off the arrears of work, before the
lawyers' holiday. As I was waiting in the hall for a good occasion, a man
with horsehair on his head, and a long blue bag in his left hand, touched me
gently on the arm, and led me into a quiet place. I followed him very gladly,
being confident that he came to me with a message from the Justiciaries.
But after taking pains to be sure that none could overhear us, he turned on
me suddenly, and asked,—
“Now, John, how is your dear mother?”

“Worshipful sir” I answered him, after recovering from my surprise at
his knowledge of our affairs, and kindly interest in them, “it is two months
now since I have seen her. Would to God that I only knew how she is faring
now, and how the business of the farm goes!”
“Sir, I respect and admire you,” the old gentleman replied, with a bow
very low and genteel; “few young court-gallants of our time are so reverent
and dutiful. Oh, how I did love my mother!” Here he turned up his eyes to
heaven, in a manner that made me feel for him and yet with a kind of
wonder.
“I am very sorry for you, sir,” I answered most respectfully, not
meaning to trespass on his grief, yet wondering at his mother's age; for he
seemed to be at least threescore; “but I am no court-gallant, sir; I am only a
farmer's son, and learning how to farm a little.”
“Enough, John; quite enough,” he cried, “I can read it in thy
countenance. Honesty is written there, and courage and simplicity. But I
fear that, in this town of London, thou art apt to be taken in by people of no
principle. Ah me! Ah me! The world is bad, and I am too old to improve it.”
Then finding him so good and kind, and anxious to improve the age, I
told him almost everything; how much I paid the fellmonger, and all the
things I had been to see; and how I longed to get away, before the corn was
ripening; yet how (despite of these desires) I felt myself bound to walk up
and down, being under a thing called “recognisance.” In short, I told him
everything; except the nature of my summons (which I had no right to tell),
and that I was out of money.
My tale was told in a little archway, apart from other lawyers; and the
other lawyers seemed to me to shift themselves, and to look askew, like
sheep through a hurdle, when the rest are feeding.
“What! Good God!” my lawyer cried, smiting his breast indignantly
with a roll of something learned; “in what country do we live? Under what
laws are we governed? No case before the court whatever; no primary
deposition, so far as we are furnished; not even a King's writ issued—and
here we have a fine young man dragged from his home and adoring mother,
during the height of agriculture, at his own cost and charges! I have heard
of many grievances; but this the very worst of all. Nothing short of a Royal
Commission could be warranty for it. This is not only illegal, sir, but most
gravely unconstitutional.”

“I had not told you, worthy sir,” I answered him, in a lower tone, “if I
could have thought that your sense of right would be moved so painfully.
But now I must beg to leave you, sir—for I see that the door again is open. I
beg you, worshipful sir, to accept—”
Upon this he put forth his hand and said, “Nay, nay, my son, not two,
not two:” yet looking away, that he might not scare me.
“To accept, kind sir, my very best thanks, and most respectful
remembrances.” And with that, I laid my hand in his. “And if, sir, any
circumstances of business or of pleasure should bring you to our part of the
world, I trust you will not forget that my mother and myself (if ever I get
home again) will do our best to make you comfortable with our poor
hospitality.”
With this I was hasting away from him, but he held my hand and
looked round at me. And he spoke without cordiality.
“Young man, a general invitation is no entry for my fee book. I have
spent a good hour of business-time in mastering thy case, and stating my
opinion of it. And being a member of the bar, called six-and-thirty years
agone by the honourable society of the Inner Temple, my fee is at my own
discretion; albeit an honorarium. For the honour of the profession, and my
position in it, I ought to charge thee at least five guineas, although I would
have accepted one, offered with good will and delicacy. Now I will enter it
two, my son, and half a crown for my clerk's fee.”
Saying this, he drew forth from his deep, blue bag, a red book having
clasps to it, and endorsed in gold letters “Fee-book”; and before I could
speak (being frightened so) he had entered on a page of it, “To
consideration of case as stated by John Ridd, and advising thereupon, two
guineas.”
“But sir, good sir,” I stammered forth, not having two guineas left in
the world, yet grieving to confess it, “I knew not that I was to pay, learned
sir. I never thought of it in that way.”
“Wounds of God! In what way thought you that a lawyer listened to
your rigmarole?”
“I thought that you listened from kindness, sir, and compassion of my
grievous case, and a sort of liking for me.”

“A lawyer like thee, young curmudgeon! A lawyer afford to feel
compassion gratis! Either thou art a very deep knave, or the greenest of all
greenhorns. Well, I suppose, I must let thee off for one guinea, and the
clerk's fee. A bad business, a shocking business!”
Now, if this man had continued kind and soft, as when he heard my
story, I would have pawned my clothes to pay him, rather than leave a debt
behind, although contracted unwittingly. But when he used harsh language
so, knowing that I did not deserve it, I began to doubt within myself
whether he deserved my money. Therefore I answered him with some
readiness, such as comes sometimes to me, although I am so slow.
“Sir, I am no curmudgeon: if a young man had called me so, it would
not have been well with him. This money shall be paid, if due, albeit I had
no desire to incur the debt. You have advised me that the Court is liable for
my expenses, so far as they be reasonable. If this be a reasonable expense,
come with me now to Lord Justice Jeffreys, and receive from him the two
guineas, or (it may be) five, for the counsel you have given me to deny his
jurisdiction.” With these words, I took his arm to lead him, for the door was
open still.
“In the name of God, boy, let me go. Worthy sir, pray let me go. My
wife is sick, and my daughter dying—in the name of God, sir, let me go.”
“Nay, nay,” I said, having fast hold of him, “I cannot let thee go
unpaid, sir. Right is right; and thou shalt have it.”
“Ruin is what I shall have, boy, if you drag me before that devil. He
will strike me from the bar at once, and starve me, and all my family. Here,
lad, good lad, take these two guineas. Thou hast despoiled the spoiler.
Never again will I trust mine eyes for knowledge of a greenhorn.”
He slipped two guineas into the hand which I had hooked through his
elbow, and spoke in an urgent whisper again, for the people came crowding
around us—“For God's sake let me go, boy; another moment will be too
late.”
“Learned sir,” I answered him, “twice you spoke, unless I err, of the
necessity of a clerk's fee, as a thing to be lamented.”
“To be sure, to be sure, my son. You have a clerk as much as I have.
There it is. Now I pray thee, take to the study of the law. Possession is nine

points of it, which thou hast of me. Self-possession is the tenth, and that
thou hast more than the other nine.”
Being flattered by this, and by the feeling of the two guineas and half-
crown, I dropped my hold upon Counsellor Kitch (for he was no less a man
than that), and he was out of sight in a second of time, wig, blue bag, and
family. And before I had time to make up my mind what I should do with
his money (for of course I meant not to keep it) the crier of the Court (as
they told me) came out, and wanted to know who I was. I told him, as
shortly as I could, that my business lay with His Majesty's bench, and was
very confidential; upon which he took me inside with warning, and showed
me to an under-clerk, who showed me to a higher one, and the higher clerk
to the head one.
When this gentleman understood all about my business (which I told
him without complaint) he frowned at me very heavily, as if I had done him
an injury.
“John Ridd,” he asked me with a stern glance, “is it your deliberate
desire to be brought into the presence of the Lord Chief Justice?”
“Surely, sir, it has been my desire for the last two months and more.”
“Then, John, thou shalt be. But mind one thing, not a word of thy long
detention, or thou mayst get into trouble.”
“How, sir? For being detained against my own wish?” I asked him; but
he turned away, as if that matter were not worth his arguing, as, indeed, I
suppose it was not, and led me through a little passage to a door with a
curtain across it.
“Now, if my Lord cross-question you,” the gentleman whispered to
me, “answer him straight out truth at once, for he will have it out of thee.
And mind, he loves not to be contradicted, neither can he bear a hang-dog
look. Take little heed of the other two; but note every word of the middle
one; and never make him speak twice.”
I thanked him for his good advice, as he moved the curtain and thrust
me in, but instead of entering withdrew, and left me to bear the brunt of it.
The chamber was not very large, though lofty to my eyes, and dark,
with wooden panels round it. At the further end were some raised seats,
such as I have seen in churches, lined with velvet, and having broad elbows,
and a canopy over the middle seat. There were only three men sitting here,

one in the centre, and one on each side; and all three were done up
wonderfully with fur, and robes of state, and curls of thick gray horsehair,
crimped and gathered, and plaited down to their shoulders. Each man had
an oak desk before him, set at a little distance, and spread with pens and
papers. Instead of writing, however, they seemed to be laughing and talking,
or rather the one in the middle seemed to be telling some good story, which
the others received with approval. By reason of their great perukes it was
hard to tell how old they were; but the one who was speaking seemed the
youngest, although he was the chief of them. A thick-set, burly, and bulky
man, with a blotchy broad face, and great square jaws, and fierce eyes full
of blazes; he was one to be dreaded by gentle souls, and to be abhorred by
the noble.
Between me and the three lord judges, some few lawyers were
gathering up bags and papers and pens and so forth, from a narrow table in
the middle of the room, as if a case had been disposed of, and no other were
called on. But before I had time to look round twice, the stout fierce man
espied me, and shouted out with a flashing stare—
“How now, countryman, who art thou?”
“May it please your worship,” I answered him loudly, “I am John
Ridd, of Oare parish, in the shire of Somerset, brought to this London, some
two months back by a special messenger, whose name is Jeremy Stickles;
and then bound over to be at hand and ready, when called upon to give
evidence, in a matter unknown to me, but touching the peace of our lord the
King, and the well-being of his subjects. Three times I have met our lord the
King, but he hath said nothing about his peace, and only held it towards me,
and every day, save Sunday, I have walked up and down the great hall of
Westminster, all the business part of the day, expecting to be called upon,
yet no one hath called upon me. And now I desire to ask your worship,
whether I may go home again?”
“Well, done, John,” replied his lordship, while I was panting with all
this speech; “I will go bail for thee, John, thou hast never made such a long
speech before; and thou art a spunky Briton, or thou couldst not have made
it now. I remember the matter well, and I myself will attend to it, although it
arose before my time”—he was but newly Chief Justice—“but I cannot take
it now, John. There is no fear of losing thee, John, any more than the Tower

of London. I grieve for His Majesty's exchequer, after keeping thee two
months or more.”
“Nay, my lord, I crave your pardon. My mother hath been keeping me.
Not a groat have I received.”
“Spank, is it so?” his lordship cried, in a voice that shook the cobwebs,
and the frown on his brow shook the hearts of men, and mine as much as
the rest of them,—“Spank, is His Majesty come to this, that he starves his
own approvers?”
“My lord, my lord,” whispered Mr. Spank, the chief-officer of
evidence, “the thing hath been overlooked, my lord, among such grave
matters of treason.”
“I will overlook thy head, foul Spank, on a spike from Temple Bar, if
ever I hear of the like again. Vile varlet, what art thou paid for? Thou hast
swindled the money thyself, foul Spank; I know thee, though thou art new
to me. Bitter is the day for thee that ever I came across thee. Answer me not
—one word more and I will have thee on a hurdle.” And he swung himself
to and fro on his bench, with both hands on his knees; and every man
waited to let it pass, knowing better than to speak to him.
“John Ridd,” said the Lord Chief Justice, at last recovering a sort of
dignity, yet daring Spank from the corners of his eyes to do so much as look
at him, “thou hast been shamefully used, John Ridd. Answer me not boy;
not a word; but go to Master Spank, and let me know how he behaves to
thee;” here he made a glance at Spank, which was worth at least ten pounds
to me; “be thou here again to-morrow, and before any other case is taken, I
will see justice done to thee. Now be off boy; thy name is Ridd, and we are
well rid of thee.”
I was only too glad to go, after all this tempest; as you may well
suppose. For if ever I saw a man's eyes become two holes for the devil to
glare from, I saw it that day; and the eyes were those of the Lord Chief
Justice Jeffreys.
Mr. Spank was in the lobby before me, and before I had recovered
myself—for I was vexed with my own terror—he came up sidling and
fawning to me, with a heavy bag of yellow leather.
“Good Master Ridd, take it all, take it all, and say a good word for me
to his lordship. He hath taken a strange fancy to thee; and thou must make

the most of it. We never saw man meet him eye to eye so, and yet not
contradict him, and that is just what he loveth. Abide in London, Master
Ridd, and he will make thy fortune. His joke upon thy name proves that.
And I pray you remember, Master Ridd, that the Spanks are sixteen in
family.”
But I would not take the bag from him, regarding it as a sort of bribe to
pay me such a lump of money, without so much as asking how great had
been my expenses. Therefore I only told him that if he would kindly keep
the cash for me until the morrow, I would spend the rest of the day in
counting (which always is sore work with me) how much it had stood me in
board and lodging, since Master Stickles had rendered me up; for until that
time he had borne my expenses. In the morning I would give Mr. Spank a
memorandum, duly signed, and attested by my landlord, including the
breakfast of that day, and in exchange for this I would take the exact
amount from the yellow bag, and be very thankful for it.
“If that is thy way of using opportunity,” said Spank, looking at me
with some contempt, “thou wilt never thrive in these times, my lad. Even
the Lord Chief Justice can be little help to thee; unless thou knowest better
than that how to help thyself.”
It mattered not to me. The word “approver” stuck in my gorge, as used
by the Lord Chief Justice; for we looked upon an approver as a very low
thing indeed. I would rather pay for every breakfast, and even every dinner,
eaten by me since here I came, than take money as an approver. And indeed
I was much disappointed at being taken in that light, having understood that
I was sent for as a trusty subject, and humble friend of His Majesty.
In the morning I met Mr. Spank waiting for me at the entrance, and
very desirous to see me. I showed him my bill, made out in fair copy, and
he laughed at it, and said, “Take it twice over, Master Ridd; once for thine
own sake, and once for His Majesty's; as all his loyal tradesmen do, when
they can get any. His Majesty knows and is proud of it, for it shows their
love of his countenance; and he says, 'bis dat qui cito dat,' then how can I
grumble at giving twice, when I give so slowly?”
“Nay, I will take it but once,” I said; “if His Majesty loves to be
robbed, he need not lack of his desire, while the Spanks are sixteen in
family.”

The clerk smiled cheerfully at this, being proud of his children's
ability; and then having paid my account, he whispered,—
“He is all alone this morning, John, and in rare good humour. He hath
been promised the handling of poor Master Algernon Sidney, and he says he
will soon make republic of him; for his state shall shortly be headless. He is
chuckling over his joke, like a pig with a nut; and that always makes him
pleasant. John Ridd, my lord!” With that he swung up the curtain bravely,
and according to special orders, I stood, face to face, and alone with Judge
Jeffreys.

CHAPTER XXVI
JOHN IS DRAINED AND CAST ASIDE

His lordship was busy with some letters, and
did not look up for a minute or two, although he
knew that I was there. Meanwhile I stood waiting to
make my bow; afraid to begin upon him, and
wondering at his great bull-head. Then he closed his
letters, well-pleased with their import, and fixed his
bold broad stare on me, as if I were an oyster
opened, and he would know how fresh I was.
“May it please your worship,” I said, “here I
am according to order, awaiting your good
pleasure.”
“Thou art made to weight, John, more than order. How much dost thou
tip the scales to?”
“Only twelvescore pounds, my lord, when I be in wrestling trim. And
sure I must have lost weight here, fretting so long in London.”
“Ha, ha! Much fret is there in thee! Hath His Majesty seen thee?”
“Yes, my lord, twice or even thrice; and he made some jest concerning
me.”
“A very bad one, I doubt not. His humour is not so dainty as mine, but
apt to be coarse and unmannerly. Now John, or Jack, by the look of thee,
thou art more used to be called.”
“Yes, your worship, when I am with old Molly and Betty Muxworthy.”
“Peace, thou forward varlet! There is a deal too much of thee. We shall
have to try short commons with thee, and thou art a very long common. Ha,
ha! Where is that rogue Spank? Spank must hear that by-and-by. It is
beyond thy great thick head, Jack.”
“Not so, my lord; I have been at school, and had very bad jokes made
upon me.”

“Ha, ha! It hath hit thee hard. And faith, it would be hard to miss thee,
even with harpoon. And thou lookest like to blubber, now. Capital, in faith!
I have thee on every side, Jack, and thy sides are manifold; many-folded at
any rate. Thou shalt have double expenses, Jack, for the wit thou hast
provoked in me.”
“Heavy goods lack heavy payment, is a proverb down our way, my
lord.”
“Ah, I hurt thee, I hurt thee, Jack. The harpoon hath no tickle for thee.
Now, Jack Whale, having hauled thee hard, we will proceed to examine
thee.” Here all his manner was changed, and he looked with his heavy
brows bent upon me, as if he had never laughed in his life, and would allow
none else to do so.
“I am ready to answer, my lord,” I replied, “if he asks me nought
beyond my knowledge, or beyond my honour.”
“Hadst better answer me everything, lump. What hast thou to do with
honour? Now is there in thy neighbourhood a certain nest of robbers,
miscreants, and outlaws, whom all men fear to handle?”
“Yes, my lord. At least, I believe some of them be robbers, and all of
them are outlaws.”
“And what is your high sheriff about, that he doth not hang them all?
Or send them up for me to hang, without more to do about them?”
“I reckon that he is afraid, my lord; it is not safe to meddle with them.
They are of good birth, and reckless; and their place is very strong.”
“Good birth! What was Lord Russell of, Lord Essex, and this Sidney?
'Tis the surest heirship to the block to be the chip of a good one. What is the
name of this pestilent race, and how many of them are there?”
“They are the Doones of Bagworthy forest, may it please your
worship. And we reckon there be about forty of them, beside the women
and children.”
“Forty Doones, all forty thieves! and women and children! Thunder of
God! How long have they been there then?”
“They may have been there thirty years, my lord; and indeed they may
have been forty. Before the great war broke out they came, longer back than
I can remember.”

“Ay, long before thou wast born, John. Good, thou speakest plainly.
Woe betide a liar, whenso I get hold of him. Ye want me on the Western
Circuit; by God, and ye shall have me, when London traitors are spun and
swung. There is a family called De Whichehalse living very nigh thee,
John?”
This he said in a sudden manner, as if to take me off my guard, and
fixed his great thick eyes on me. And in truth I was much astonished.
“Yes, my lord, there is. At least, not so very far from us. Baron de
Whichehalse, of Ley Manor.”
“Baron, ha! of the Exchequer—eh, lad? And taketh dues instead of His
Majesty. Somewhat which halts there ought to come a little further, I trow.
It shall be seen to, as well as the witch which makes it so to halt. Riotous
knaves in West England, drunken outlaws, you shall dance, if ever I play
pipe for you. John Ridd, I will come to Oare parish, and rout out the Oare of
Babylon.”
“Although your worship is so learned,” I answered seeing that now he
was beginning to make things uneasy; “your worship, though being Chief
Justice, does little justice to us. We are downright good and loyal folk; and I
have not seen, since here I came to this great town of London, any who may
better us, or even come anigh us, in honesty, and goodness, and duty to our
neighbours. For we are very quiet folk, not prating our own virtues—”
“Enough, good John, enough! Knowest thou not that modesty is the
maidenhood of virtue, lost even by her own approval? Now hast thou ever
heard or thought that De Whichehalse is in league with the Doones of
Bagworthy?”
Saying these words rather slowly, he skewered his great eyes into
mine, so that I could not think at all, neither look at him, nor yet away. The
idea was so new to me that it set my wits all wandering; and looking into
me, he saw that I was groping for the truth.
“John Ridd, thine eyes are enough for me. I see thou hast never
dreamed of it. Now hast thou ever seen a man whose name is Thomas
Faggus?”
“Yes, sir, many and many a time. He is my own worthy cousin; and I
fear he that hath intentions”—here I stopped, having no right there to speak
about our Annie.

“Tom Faggus is a good man,” he said; and his great square face had a
smile which showed me he had met my cousin; “Master Faggus hath made
mistakes as to the title to property, as lawyers oftentimes may do; but take
him all for all, he is a thoroughly straightforward man; presents his bill, and
has it paid, and makes no charge for drawing it. Nevertheless, we must tax
his costs, as of any other solicitor.”
“To be sure, to be sure, my lord!” was all that I could say, not
understanding what all this meant.
“I fear he will come to the gallows,” said the Lord Chief Justice,
sinking his voice below the echoes; “tell him this from me, Jack. He shall
never be condemned before me; but I cannot be everywhere, and some of
our Justices may keep short memory of his dinners. Tell him to change his
name, turn parson, or do something else, to make it wrong to hang him.
Parson is the best thing, he hath such command of features, and he might
take his tithes on horseback. Now a few more things, John Ridd; and for the
present I have done with thee.”
All my heart leaped up at this, to get away from London so: and yet I
could hardly trust to it.
“Is there any sound round your way of disaffection to His Majesty, His
most gracious Majesty?”
“No, my lord: no sign whatever. We pray for him in church perhaps,
and we talk about him afterwards, hoping it may do him good, as it is
intended. But after that we have naught to say, not knowing much about
him—at least till I get home again.”
“That is as it should be, John. And the less you say the better. But I
have heard of things in Taunton, and even nearer to you in Dulverton, and
even nigher still upon Exmoor; things which are of the pillory kind, and
even more of the gallows. I see that you know naught of them.
Nevertheless, it will not be long before all England hears of them. Now,
John, I have taken a liking to thee, for never man told me the truth, without
fear or favour, more thoroughly and truly than thou hast done. Keep thou
clear of this, my son. It will come to nothing; yet many shall swing high for
it. Even I could not save thee, John Ridd, if thou wert mixed in this affair.
Keep from the Doones, keep from De Whichehalse, keep from everything
which leads beyond the sight of thy knowledge. I meant to use thee as my
tool; but I see thou art too honest and simple. I will send a sharper down;

but never let me find thee, John, either a tool for the other side, or a tube for
my words to pass through.”
Here the Lord Justice gave me such a glare that I wished myself well
rid of him, though thankful for his warnings; and seeing how he had made
upon me a long abiding mark of fear, he smiled again in a jocular manner,
and said,—
“Now, get thee gone, Jack. I shall remember thee; and I trow, thou
wilt'st not for many a day forget me.”
“My lord, I was never so glad to go; for the hay must be in, and the
ricks unthatched, and none of them can make spars like me, and two men to
twist every hay-rope, and mother thinking it all right, and listening right and
left to lies, and cheated at every pig she kills, and even the skins of the
sheep to go—”
“John Ridd, I thought none could come nigh your folk in honesty, and
goodness, and duty to their neighbours!”
“Sure enough, my lord; but by our folk, I mean ourselves, not the men
nor women neither—”
“That will do, John. Go thy way. Not men, nor women neither, are
better than they need be.”
I wished to set this matter right; but his worship would not hear me,
and only drove me out of court, saying that men were thieves and liars, no
more in one place than another, but all alike all over the world, and women
not far behind them. It was not for me to dispute this point (though I was
not yet persuaded of it), both because my lord was a Judge, and must know
more about it, and also that being a man myself I might seem to be
defending myself in an unbecoming manner. Therefore I made a low bow,
and went; in doubt as to which had the right of it.
But though he had so far dismissed me, I was not yet quite free to go,
inasmuch as I had not money enough to take me all the way to Oare, unless
indeed I should go afoot, and beg my sustenance by the way, which seemed
to be below me. Therefore I got my few clothes packed, and my few debts
paid, all ready to start in half an hour, if only they would give me enough to
set out upon the road with. For I doubted not, being young and strong, that I
could walk from London to Oare in ten days or in twelve at most, which
was not much longer than horse-work; only I had been a fool, as you will

say when you hear it. For after receiving from Master Spank the amount of
the bill which I had delivered—less indeed by fifty shillings than the money
my mother had given me, for I had spent fifty shillings, and more, in seeing
the town and treating people, which I could not charge to His Majesty—I
had first paid all my debts thereout, which were not very many, and then
supposing myself to be an established creditor of the Treasury for my
coming needs, and already scenting the country air, and foreseeing the joy
of my mother, what had I done but spent half my balance, ay and more than
three-quarters of it, upon presents for mother, and Annie, and Lizzie, John
Fry, and his wife, and Betty Muxworthy, Bill Dadds, Jim Slocombe, and, in
a word, half of the rest of the people at Oare, including all the Snowe
family, who must have things good and handsome? And if I must while I
am about it, hide nothing from those who read me, I had actually bought for
Lorna a thing the price of which quite frightened me, till the shopkeeper
said it was nothing at all, and that no young man, with a lady to love him,
could dare to offer her rubbish, such as the Jew sold across the way. Now
the mere idea of beautiful Lorna ever loving me, which he talked about as
patly (though of course I never mentioned her) as if it were a settled thing,
and he knew all about it, that mere idea so drove me abroad, that if he had
asked three times as much, I could never have counted the money.
Now in all this I was a fool of course—not for remembering my
friends and neighbours, which a man has a right to do, and indeed is bound
to do, when he comes from London—but for not being certified first what
cash I had to go on with. And to my great amazement, when I went with
another bill for the victuals of only three days more, and a week's expense
on the homeward road reckoned very narrowly, Master Spank not only
refused to grant me any interview, but sent me out a piece of blue paper,
looking like a butcher's ticket, and bearing these words and no more, “John
Ridd, go to the devil. He who will not when he may, when he will, he shall
have nay.” From this I concluded that I had lost favour in the sight of Chief
Justice Jeffreys. Perhaps because my evidence had not proved of any value!
perhaps because he meant to let the matter lie, till cast on him.
Anyhow, it was a reason of much grief, and some anger to me, and
very great anxiety, disappointment, and suspense. For here was the time of
the hay gone past, and the harvest of small corn coming on, and the trout
now rising at the yellow Sally, and the blackbirds eating our white-heart
cherries (I was sure, though I could not see them), and who was to do any

good for mother, or stop her from weeping continually? And more than this,
what was become of Lorna? Perhaps she had cast me away altogether, as a
flouter and a changeling; perhaps she had drowned herself in the black well;
perhaps (and that was worst of all) she was even married, child as she was,
to that vile Carver Doone, if the Doones ever cared about marrying! That
last thought sent me down at once to watch for Mr. Spank again, resolved
that if I could catch him, spank him I would to a pretty good tune, although
sixteen in family.
However, there was no such thing as to find him; and the usher vowed
(having orders I doubt) that he was gone to the sea for the good of his
health, having sadly overworked himself; and that none but a poor devil like
himself, who never had handling of money, would stay in London this foul,
hot weather; which was likely to bring the plague with it. Here was another
new terror for me, who had heard of the plagues of London, and the
horrible things that happened; and so going back to my lodgings at once, I
opened my clothes and sought for spots, especially as being so long at a
hairy fellmonger's; but finding none, I fell down and thanked God for that
same, and vowed to start for Oare to-morrow, with my carbine loaded,
come weal come woe, come sun come shower; though all the parish should
laugh at me, for begging my way home again, after the brave things said of
my going, as if I had been the King's cousin.
But I was saved in some degree from this lowering of my pride, and
what mattered more, of mother's; for going to buy with my last crown-piece
(after all demands were paid) a little shot and powder, more needful on the
road almost than even shoes or victuals, at the corner of the street I met my
good friend Jeremy Stickles, newly come in search of me. I took him back
to my little room—mine at least till to-morrow morning—and told him all
my story, and how much I felt aggrieved by it. But he surprised me very
much, by showing no surprise at all.
“It is the way of the world, Jack. They have gotten all they can from
thee, and why should they feed thee further? We feed not a dead pig, I trow,
but baste him well with brine and rue. Nay, we do not victual him upon the
day of killing; which they have done to thee. Thou art a lucky man, John;
thou hast gotten one day's wages, or at any rate half a day, after thy work
was rendered. God have mercy on me, John! The things I see are manifold;
and so is my regard of them. What use to insist on this, or make a special

point of that, or hold by something said of old, when a different mood was
on? I tell thee, Jack, all men are liars; and he is the least one who presses
not too hard on them for lying.”
This was all quite dark to me, for I never looked at things like that, and
never would own myself a liar, not at least to other people, nor even to
myself, although I might to God sometimes, when trouble was upon me.
And if it comes to that, no man has any right to be called a “liar” for
smoothing over things unwitting, through duty to his neighbour.
“Five pounds thou shalt have, Jack,” said Jeremy Stickles suddenly,
while I was all abroad with myself as to being a liar or not; “five pounds,
and I will take my chance of wringing it from that great rogue Spank. Ten I
would have made it, John, but for bad luck lately. Put back your bits of
paper, lad; I will have no acknowledgment. John Ridd, no nonsense with
me!”
For I was ready to kiss his hand, to think that any man in London (the
meanest and most suspicious place, upon all God's earth) should trust me
with five pounds, without even a receipt for it! It overcame me so that I
sobbed; for, after all, though big in body, I am but a child at heart. It was not
the five pounds that moved me, but the way of giving it; and after so much
bitter talk, the great trust in my goodness.

CHAPTER XXVII
HOME AGAIN AT LAST

It was the beginning of wheat-harvest, when I
came to Dunster town, having walked all the way
from London, and being somewhat footsore. For
though five pounds was enough to keep me in food
and lodging upon the road, and leave me many a
shilling to give to far poorer travellers, it would
have been nothing for horse-hire, as I knew too well
by the prices Jeremy Stickles had paid upon our
way to London. Now I never saw a prettier town
than Dunster looked that evening; for sooth to say, I
had almost lost all hope of reaching it that night,
although the castle was long in view. But being once there, my troubles
were gone, at least as regarded wayfaring; for mother's cousin, the worthy
tanner (with whom we had slept on the way to London), was in such
indignation at the plight in which I came back to him, afoot, and weary, and
almost shoeless—not to speak of upper things—that he swore then, by the
mercy of God, that if the schemes abrewing round him, against those
bloody Papists, should come to any head or shape, and show good chance
of succeeding, he would risk a thousand pounds, as though it were a penny.
I told him not to do it, because I had heard otherwise, but was not at
liberty to tell one-tenth of what I knew, and indeed had seen in London
town. But of this he took no heed, because I only nodded at him; and he
could not make it out. For it takes an old man, or at least a middle-aged one,
to nod and wink, with any power on the brains of other men. However, I
think I made him know that the bad state in which I came to his town, and
the great shame I had wrought for him among the folk round the card-table
at the Luttrell Arms, was not to be, even there, attributed to King Charles
the Second, nor even to his counsellors, but to my own speed of travelling,
which had beat post-horses. For being much distraught in mind, and
desperate in body, I had made all the way from London to Dunster in six

days, and no more. It may be one hundred and seventy miles, I cannot tell
to a furlong or two, especially as I lost my way more than a dozen times;
but at any rate there in six days I was, and most kindly they received me.
The tanner had some excellent daughters, I forget how many; very pretty
damsels, and well set up, and able to make good pastry. But though they
asked me many questions, and made a sort of lord of me, and offered to
darn my stockings (which in truth required it), I fell asleep in the midst of
them, although I would not acknowledge it; and they said, “Poor cousin! he
is weary”, and led me to a blessed bed, and kissed me all round like swan's
down.
In the morning all the Exmoor hills,
the thought of which had frightened me
at the end of each day's travel, seemed
no more than bushels to me, as I looked
forth the bedroom window, and thanked
God for the sight of them. And even so, I
had not to climb them, at least by my
own labour. For my most worthy uncle
(as we oft call a parent's cousin), finding
it impossible to keep me for the day, and owning indeed that I was right in
hastening to my mother, vowed that walk I should not, even though he lost
his Saturday hides from Minehead and from Watchett. Accordingly he sent
me forth on the very strongest nag he had, and the maidens came to wish
me God-speed, and kissed their hands at the doorway. It made me proud
and glad to think that after seeing so much of the world, and having held
my own with it, I was come once more among my own people, and found
them kinder, and more warm-hearted, ay and better looking too, than almost
any I had happened upon in the mighty city of London.
But how shall I tell you the things I felt, and the swelling of my heart
within me, as I drew nearer, and more near, to the place of all I loved and
owned, to the haunt of every warm remembrance, the nest of all the
fledgling hopes—in a word, to home? The first sheep I beheld on the moor
with a great red J.R. on his side (for mother would have them marked with
my name, instead of her own as they should have been), I do assure you my
spirit leaped, and all my sight came to my eyes. I shouted out, “Jem,
boy!”—for that was his name, and a rare hand he was at fighting—and he
knew me in spite of the stranger horse; and I leaned over and stroked his

head, and swore he should never be mutton. And when I was passed he set
off at full gallop, to call the rest of the J.R.'s together, and tell them young
master was come home at last.
But bless your heart, and my own as well, it would take me all the
afternoon to lay before you one-tenth of the things which came home to me
in that one half-hour, as the sun was sinking, in the real way he ought to
sink. I touched my horse with no spur nor whip, feeling that my slow wits
would go, if the sights came too fast over them. Here was the pool where
we washed the sheep, and there was the hollow that oozed away, where I
had shot three wild ducks. Here was the peat-rick that hid my dinner, when
I could not go home for it, and there was the bush with the thyme growing
round it, where Annie had found a great swarm of our bees. And now was
the corner of the dry stone wall, where the moor gave over in earnest, and
the partridges whisked from it into the corn lands, and called that their
supper was ready, and looked at our house and the ricks as they ran, and
would wait for that comfort till winter.
And there I saw—but let me go—Annie was too much for me. She
nearly pulled me off my horse, and kissed the very mouth of the carbine.
“I knew you would come. Oh John! Oh
John! I have waited here every Saturday night;
and I saw you for the last mile or more, but I
would not come round the corner, for fear that I
should cry, John, and then not cry when I got
you. Now I may cry as much as I like, and you
need not try to stop me, John, because I am so
happy. But you mustn't cry yourself, John; what
will mother think of you? She will be so jealous
of me.”
What mother thought I cannot tell; and
indeed I doubt if she thought at all for more
than half an hour, but only managed to hold me
tight, and cry, and thank God now and then, but
with some fear of His taking me, if she should
be too grateful. Moreover she thought it was
my own doing, and I ought to have the credit of
it, and she even came down very sharply upon John's wife, Mrs. Fry, for

saying that we must not be too proud, for all of it was the Lord's doing.
However, dear mother was ashamed of that afterwards, and asked Mrs.
Fry's humble pardon; and perhaps I ought not to have mentioned it.
Old Smiler had told them that I was coming—all the rest, I mean,
except Annie—for having escaped from his halter-ring, he was come out to
graze in the lane a bit; when what should he see but a strange horse coming
with young master and mistress upon him, for Annie must needs get up
behind me, there being only sheep to look at her. Then Smiler gave us a
stare and a neigh, with his tail quite stiff with amazement, and then
(whether in joy or through indignation) he flung up his hind feet and
galloped straight home, and set every dog wild with barking.
Now, methinks, quite enough has been said concerning this mighty
return of the young John Ridd (which was known up at Cosgate that
evening), and feeling that I cannot describe it, how can I hope that any one
else will labour to imagine it, even of the few who are able? For very few
can have travelled so far, unless indeed they whose trade it is, or very
unsettled people. And even of those who have done so, not one in a hundred
can have such a home as I had to come home to.
Mother wept again, with grief and some wrath, and so did Annie also,
and even little Eliza, and all were unsettled in loyalty, and talked about a
republic, when I told them how I had been left without money for travelling
homeward, and expected to have to beg my way, which Farmer Snowe
would have heard of. And though I could see they were disappointed at my
failure of any promotion, they all declared how glad they were, and how
much better they liked me to be no more than what they were accustomed
to. At least, my mother and Annie said so, without waiting to hear any
more; but Lizzie did not answer to it, until I had opened my bag and shown
the beautiful present I had for her. And then she kissed me, almost like
Annie, and vowed that she thought very little of captains.
For Lizzie's present was the best of all, I mean, of course, except
Lorna's (which I carried in my breast all the way, hoping that it might make
her love me, from having lain so long, close to my heart). For I had brought
Lizzie something dear, and a precious heavy book it was, and much beyond
my understanding; whereas I knew well that to both the others my gifts
would be dear, for mine own sake. And happier people could not be found
than the whole of us were that evening.

CHAPTER XXVIII
JOHN HAS HOPE OF LORNA

Much as I longed to know more about Lorna,
and though all my heart was yearning, I could not
reconcile it yet with my duty to mother and Annie,
to leave them on the following day, which happened
to be a Sunday. For lo, before breakfast was out of
our mouths, there came all the men of the farm, and
their wives, and even the two crow-boys, dressed as
if going to Barnstaple fair, to inquire how Master
John was, and whether it was true that the King had
made him one of his body-guard; and if so, what
was to be done with the belt for the championship of
the West-Counties wrestling, which I had held now for a year or more, and
none were ready to challenge it. Strange to say, this last point seemed the
most important of all to them; and none asked who was to manage the farm,
or answer for their wages; but all asked who was to wear the belt.
To this I replied, after shaking hands twice over all round with all of
them, that I meant to wear the belt myself, for the honour of Oare parish, so
long as ever God gave me strength and health to meet all-comers; for I had
never been asked to be body-guard, and if asked I would never have done it.
Some of them cried that the King must be mazed, not to keep me for his
protection, in these violent times of Popery. I could have told them that the
King was not in the least afraid of Papists, but on the contrary, very fond of
them; however, I held my tongue, remembering what Judge Jeffreys bade
me.
In church, the whole congregation, man, woman, and child (except,
indeed, the Snowe girls, who only looked when I was not watching), turned
on me with one accord, and stared so steadfastly, to get some reflection of
the King from me, that they forgot the time to kneel down and the parson
was forced to speak to them. If I coughed, or moved my book, or bowed, or

even said “Amen,” glances were exchanged which meant—“That he hath
learned in London town, and most likely from His Majesty.”
However, all this went off in time, and people became even angry with
me for not being sharper (as they said), or smarter, or a whit more
fashionable, for all the great company I had seen, and all the wondrous
things wasted upon me.
But though I may have been none the wiser by reason of my stay in
London, at any rate I was much the better in virtue of coming home again.
For now I had learned the joy of quiet, and the gratitude for good things
round us, and the love we owe to others (even those who must be kind), for
their indulgence to us. All this, before my journey, had been too much as a
matter of course to me; but having missed it now I knew that it was a gift,
and might be lost. Moreover, I had pined so much, in the dust and heat of
that great town, for trees, and fields, and running waters, and the sounds of
country life, and the air of country winds, that never more could I grow
weary of those soft enjoyments; or at least I thought so then.
To awake as the summer sun came slanting over the hill-tops, with
hope on every beam adance to the laughter of the morning; to see the leaves
across the window ruffling on the fresh new air, and the tendrils of the
powdery vine turning from their beaded sleep. Then the lustrous meadows
far beyond the thatch of the garden-wall, yet seen beneath the hanging
scollops of the walnut-tree, all awaking, dressed in pearl, all amazed at their
own glistening, like a maid at her own ideas. Down them troop the lowing
kine, walking each with a step of character (even as men and women do),
yet all alike with toss of horns, and spread of udders ready. From them
without a word, we turn to the farm-yard proper, seen on the right, and
dryly strawed from the petty rush of the pitch-paved runnel. Round it stand
the snug out-buildings, barn, corn-chamber, cider-press, stables, with a
blinker'd horse in every doorway munching, while his driver tightens
buckles, whistles and looks down the lane, dallying to begin his labour till
the milkmaids be gone by. Here the cock comes forth at last;—where has he
been lingering?—eggs may tell to-morrow—he claps his wings and shouts
“cock-a-doodle”; and no other cock dare look at him. Two or three go
sidling off, waiting till their spurs be grown; and then the crowd of partlets
comes, chattering how their lord has dreamed, and crowed at two in the
morning, and praying that the old brown rat would only dare to face him.

But while the cock is crowing still, and the pullet world admiring him, who
comes up but the old turkey-cock, with all his family round him. Then the
geese at the lower end begin to thrust their breasts out, and mum their
down-bits, and look at the gander and scream shrill joy for the conflict;
while the ducks in pond show nothing but tail, in proof of their strict
neutrality.
While yet we dread for the coming event, and the fight which would
jar on the morning, behold the grandmother of sows, gruffly grunting right
and left with muzzle which no ring may tame (not being matrimonial),
hulks across between the two, moving all each side at once, and then all of
the other side as if she were chined down the middle, and afraid of spilling
the salt from her. As this mighty view of lard hides each combatant from the
other, gladly each retires and boasts how he would have slain his neighbour,
but that old sow drove the other away, and no wonder he was afraid of her,
after all the chicks she had eaten.
And so it goes on; and so the sun comes, stronger from his drink of
dew; and the cattle in the byres, and the horses from the stable, and the men
from cottage-door, each has had his rest and food, all smell alike of hay and
straw, and every one must hie to work, be it drag, or draw, or delve.
So thought I on the Monday morning; while my own work lay before
me, and I was plotting how to quit it, void of harm to every one, and let my
love have work a little—hardest perhaps of all work, and yet as sure as
sunrise. I knew that my first day's task on the farm would be strictly
watched by every one, even by my gentle mother, to see what I had learned
in London. But could I let still another day pass, for Lorna to think me
faithless?
I felt much inclined to tell dear mother all about Lorna, and how I
loved her, yet had no hope of winning her. Often and often, I had longed to
do this, and have done with it. But the thought of my father's terrible death,
at the hands of the Doones, prevented me. And it seemed to me foolish and
mean to grieve mother, without any chance of my suit ever speeding. If
once Lorna loved me, my mother should know it; and it would be the
greatest happiness to me to have no concealment from her, though at first
she was sure to grieve terribly. But I saw no more chance of Lorna loving
me, than of the man in the moon coming down; or rather of the moon
coming down to the man, as related in old mythology.

Now the merriment of the small birds, and the clear voice of the
waters, and the lowing of cattle in meadows, and the view of no houses
(except just our own and a neighbour's), and the knowledge of everybody
around, their kindness of heart and simplicity, and love of their neighbour's
doings,—all these could not help or please me at all, and many of them
were much against me, in my secret depth of longing and dark tumult of the
mind. Many people may think me foolish, especially after coming from
London, where many nice maids looked at me (on account of my bulk and
stature), and I might have been fitted up with a sweetheart, in spite of my
west-country twang, and the smallness of my purse; if only I had said the
word. But nay; I have contempt for a man whose heart is like a shirt-stud
(such as I saw in London cards), fitted into one to-day, sitting bravely on
the breast; plucked out on the morrow morn, and the place that knew it,
gone.
Now, what did I do but take my chance; reckless whether any one
heeded me or not, only craving Lorna's heed, and time for ten words to her.
Therefore I left the men of the farm as far away as might be, after making
them work with me (which no man round our parts could do, to his own
satisfaction), and then knowing them to be well weary, very unlike to
follow me—and still more unlike to tell of me, for each had his London
present—I strode right away, in good trust of my speed, without any more
misgivings; but resolved to face the worst of it, and to try to be home for
supper.
And first I went, I know not why, to the crest of the broken highland,
whence I had agreed to watch for any mark or signal. And sure enough at
last I saw (when it was too late to see) that the white stone had been
covered over with a cloth or mantle,—the sign that something had arisen to
make Lorna want me. For a moment I stood amazed at my evil fortune; that
I should be too late, in the very thing of all things on which my heart was
set! Then after eyeing sorrowfully every crick and cranny to be sure that not
a single flutter of my love was visible, off I set, with small respect either for
my knees or neck, to make the round of the outer cliffs, and come up my
old access.
Nothing could stop me; it was not long, although to me it seemed an
age, before I stood in the niche of rock at the head of the slippery
watercourse, and gazed into the quiet glen, where my foolish heart was

dwelling. Notwithstanding doubts of right, notwithstanding sense of duty,
and despite all manly striving, and the great love of my home, there my
heart was ever dwelling, knowing what a fool it was, and content to know
it.
Many birds came twittering round me in the gold of August; many
trees showed twinkling beauty, as the sun went lower; and the lines of water
fell, from wrinkles into dimples. Little heeding, there I crouched; though
with sense of everything that afterwards should move me, like a picture or a
dream; and everything went by me softly, while my heart was gazing.
At last, a little figure came, not insignificant (I mean), but looking very
light and slender in the moving shadows, gently here and softly there, as if
vague of purpose, with a gloss of tender movement, in and out the wealth of
trees, and liberty of the meadow. Who was I to crouch, or doubt, or look at
her from a distance; what matter if they killed me now, and one tear came to
bury me? Therefore I rushed out at once, as if shot-guns were unknown yet;
not from any real courage, but from prisoned love burst forth.
I know not whether my own Lorna was afraid of what I looked, or
what I might say to her, or of her own thoughts of me; all I know is that she
looked frightened, when I hoped for gladness. Perhaps the power of my joy
was more than maiden liked to own, or in any way to answer to; and to tell
the truth, it seemed as if I might now forget myself; while she would take
good care of it. This makes a man grow thoughtful; unless, as some low
fellows do, he believe all women hypocrites.
Therefore I went slowly towards her, taken back in my impulse; and
said all I could come to say, with some distress in doing it.
“Mistress Lorna, I had hope that you were in need of me.”
“Oh, yes; but that was long ago; two months ago, or more, sir.” And
saying this she looked away, as if it all were over. But I was now so dazed
and frightened, that it took my breath away, and I could not answer, feeling
sure that I was robbed and some one else had won her. And I tried to turn
away, without another word, and go.
But I could not help one stupid sob, though mad with myself for
allowing it, but it came too sharp for pride to stay it, and it told a world of
things. Lorna heard it, and ran to me, with her bright eyes full of wonder,
pity, and great kindness, as if amazed that I had more than a simple liking
for her. Then she held out both hands to me; and I took and looked at them.

“Master Ridd, I did not mean,” she whispered, very softly, “I did not
mean to vex you.”
“If you would be loath to vex me, none else in this world can do it,” I
answered out of my great love, but fearing yet to look at her, mine eyes not
being strong enough.
“Come away from this bright place,” she answered, trembling in her
turn; “I am watched and spied of late. Come beneath the shadows, John.”
I would have leaped into the valley of the shadow of death (as
described by the late John Bunyan), only to hear her call me “John”; though
Apollyon were lurking there, and Despair should lock me in.
She stole across the silent grass; but I strode hotly after her; fear was
all beyond me now, except the fear of losing her. I could not but behold her
manner, as she went before me, all her grace, and lovely sweetness, and her
sense of what she was.
She led me to her own rich bower, which I told of once before; and if
in spring it were a sight, what was it in summer glory? But although my
mind had notice of its fairness and its wonder, not a heed my heart took of
it, neither dwelt it in my presence more than flowing water. All that in my
presence dwelt, all that in my heart was felt, was the maiden moving gently,
and afraid to look at me.
For now the power of my love was abiding on her, new to her,
unknown to her; not a thing to speak about, nor even to think clearly; only
just to feel and wonder, with a pain of sweetness. She could look at me no
more, neither could she look away, with a studied manner—only to let fall
her eyes, and blush, and be put out with me, and still more with herself.
I left her quite alone; though close, though tingling to have hold of her.
Even her right hand was dropped and lay among the mosses. Neither did I
try to steal one glimpse below her eyelids. Life and death to me were
hanging on the first glance I should win; yet I let it be so.
After long or short—I know not, yet ere I was weary, ere I yet began to
think or wish for any answer—Lorna slowly raised her eyelids, with a
gleam of dew below them, and looked at me doubtfully. Any look with so
much in it never met my gaze before.
“Darling, do you love me?” was all that I could say to her.

“Yes, I like you very much,” she answered, with her eyes gone from
me, and her dark hair falling over, so as not to show me things.
“But do you love me, Lorna, Lorna; do you love me more than all the
world?”
“No, to be sure not. Now why should I?”
“In truth, I know not why you should. Only I hoped that you did,
Lorna. Either love me not at all, or as I love you for ever.”
“John I love you very much; and I would not grieve you. You are the
bravest, and the kindest, and the simplest of all men—I mean of all people
—I like you very much, Master Ridd, and I think of you almost every day.”
“That will not do for me, Lorna. Not almost every day I think, but
every instant of my life, of you. For you I would give up my home, my love
of all the world beside, my duty to my dearest ones, for you I would give up
my life, and hope of life beyond it. Do you love me so?”
“Not by any means,” said Lorna; “no, I like you very much, when you
do not talk so wildly; and I like to see you come as if you would fill our
valley up, and I like to think that even Carver would be nothing in your
hands—but as to liking you like that, what should make it likely? especially
when I have made the signal, and for some two months or more you have
never even answered it! If you like me so ferociously, why do you leave me
for other people to do just as they like with me?”
“To do as they liked! Oh, Lorna, not to make you marry Carver?”
“No, Master Ridd, be not frightened so; it makes me fear to look at
you.”
“But you have not married Carver yet? Say quick! Why keep me
waiting so?”
“Of course I have not, Master Ridd. Should I be here if I had, think
you, and allowing you to like me so, and to hold my hand, and make me
laugh, as I declare you almost do sometimes? And at other times you
frighten me.”
“Did they want you to marry Carver? Tell me all the truth of it.”
“Not yet, not yet. They are not half so impetuous as you are, John. I
am only just seventeen, you know, and who is to think of marrying? But
they wanted me to give my word, and be formally betrothed to him in the