Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore A romance of Exmoor

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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.





CONTENTS


01     ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION

02     AN IMPORTANT ITEM

03     THE WARPATH OF THE DOONES

04     A VERY RASH VISIT

05     AN ILLEGAL SETTLEMENT

06     NECESSARY PRACTICE

07     HARD IT IS TO CLIMB

08     A BOY AND A GIRL

09     THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME

10     A BRAVE RESCUE AND A ROUGH RIDE

11     TOM DESERVES HIS SUPPER

12     A MAN JUSTLY POPULAR

13     MASTER HUCKABACK COMES IN

14     A MOTION WHICH ENDS IN A MULL

15     MASTER HUCKABACK FAILS OF WARRANT

16     LORNA GROWS FORMIDABLE

17     JOHN IS CLEARLY BEWITCHED

18     WITCHERY LEADS TO WITCHCRAFT

19     ANOTHER DANGEROUS INTERVIEW

20     LORNA BEGINS HER STORY

21     LORNA ENDS HER STORY

22     A LONG SPRING MONTH

23     A ROYAL INVITATION

24     A SAFE PASS FOR KING'S MESSENGER

25     A GREAT MAN ATTENDS TO BUSINESS

26     JOHN IS DRAINED AND CAST ASIDE

27     HOME AGAIN AT LAST

28     JOHN HAS HOPE OF LORNA

29     REAPING LEADS TO REVELLING

30     ANNIE GETS THE BEST OF IT

31    JOHN FRY'S ERRAND

32    FEEDING OF THE PIGS

33    AN EARLY MORNING CALLING

34    TWO NEGATIVES MAKE AN AFFIRMATIVE

35   RUTH IS NOT LIKE LORNA

36   JOHN RETURNS TO BUSINESS

37   A VERY DESPERATE VENTURE

38   A GOOD TURN FOR JEREMY

39   A TROUBLED STATE AND A FOOLISH JOKE

40   TWO FOOLS TOGETHER

41   COLD COMFORT

42   THE GREAT WINTER

43   NOT TOO SOON

44   BROUGHT HOME AT LAST

45   A CHANGE LONG NEEDED

46   SQUIRE FAGGUS MAKES SOME LUCKY HITS

47   JEREMY IN DANGER

48   EVERY MAN MUST DEFEND HIMSELF

49   MAIDEN SENTINELS ARE BEST

50   A MERRY MEETING A SAD ONE

51   A VISIT FROM THE COUNSELLOR

52    THE WAY TO MAKE THE CREAM RISE

53   JEREMY FINDS OUT SOMETHING

54   MUTUAL DISCOMFITURE

55   GETTING INTO CHANCERY

56   JOHN BECOMES TOO POPULAR

57   LORNA KNOWS HER NURSE

59   MASTER HUCKABACK'S SECRET

60   LORNA GONE AWAY

61   ANNIE LUCKIER THAN JOHN

62   THEREFORE HE SEEKS COMFORT

63   THE KING MUST NOT BE PRAYED FOR

64   JOHN IS WORSTED BY THE WOMEN

65   SLAUGHTER IN THE MARSHES

66   FALLING AMONG LAMBS

67   SUITABLE DEVOTION

68   LORNA STILL IS LORNA

69   JOHN IS JOHN NO LONGER

70   NOT TO BE PUT UP WITH

71   COMPELLED TO VOLUNTEER

72   A LONG ACCOUNT SETTLED

73   THE COUNSELLOR AND THE CARVER

74   HOW TO GET OUT OF CHANCERY

75   DRIVEN BEYOND ENDURANCE

76   LIFE AND LORNA COME AGAIN


Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Deluxe Edition Chapter 01

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 Caesar__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
perservering 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 [Greek word].

My eldest grandson makes bold to say that I never could have learned
[Greek word], 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 circumfere 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.



Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Chapter 02

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.



Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Deluxe Edition Chapter 03

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 his 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 beings 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.



Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Deluxe Edition Chapter 04

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.



Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Deluxe Edition Chapter 05

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.



Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Deluxe Edition Chapter 06

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.



Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Deluxe Edition Chapter 07

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.



Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Deluxe Edition Chapter 08

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.



Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Deluxe Edition Chapter 09

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.