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.

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CHAPTER VI

NECESSARY PRACTICE

[Illustration: 043.jpg Illustrated Capital]

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