rt of my character that I like other
people to think me slow, and to labour hard to enlighten me, while all
the time I can say to myself, "This man is shallower than I am; it is
pleasant to see his shoals come up while he is sounding mine so!" Not
that I would so behave, God forbid, with anybody (be it man or woman)
who in simple heart approached me, with no gauge of intellect. But when
the upper hand is taken, upon the faith of one's patience, by a man of
even smaller wits (not that Jeremy was that, neither could he have lived
to be thought so), why, it naturally happens, that we knuckle under,
with an ounce of indignation.

Jeremy's tale would have moved me greatly both with sorrow and anger,
even without my guess at first, and now my firm belief, that the child
of those unlucky parents was indeed my Lorna. And as I thought of the
lady's troubles, and her faith in Providence, and her cruel, childless
death, and then imagined how my darling would be overcome to hear it,
you may well believe that my quick replies to Jeremy Stickles's banter
were but as the flourish of a drum to cover the sounds of pain.

For when he described the heavy coach and the persons in and upon it,
and the breaking down at Dulverton, and the place of their destination,
as well as the time and the weather, and the season of the year, my
heart began to burn within me, and my mind replaced the pictures, first
of the foreign lady's-maid by the pump caressing me, and then of the
coach struggling up the hill, and the beautiful dame, and the fine
little boy, with the white cockade in his hat; but most of all the
little girl, dark-haired and very lovely, and having even in those days
the rich soft look of Lorna.

But when he spoke of the necklace thrown over the head of the little
maiden, and of her disappearance, before my eyes arose at once the
flashing of the beacon-fire, the lonely moors embrowned with the light,
the tramp of the outlaw cavalcade, and the helpless child head-downward,
lying across the robber's saddle-bow.

Then I remembered my own mad shout of boyish indignation, and marvelled
at the strange long way by which the events of life come round. And
while I thought of my own return, and childish attempt to hide myself
from sorrow in the sawpit, and the agony of my mother's tears, it did
not fail to strike me as a thing of omen, that the selfsame day should
be, both to my darling and myself, the blackest and most miserable of
all youth