ittle like one, as you see,
Master Ridd; and she followed me, expecting that I would open wings and
fly when we came to any difficulty. I brought her home with me, so far
as this can be a home, and she made herself my sole attendant, without
so much as asking me. She has beaten two or three other girls, who used
to wait upon me, until they are afraid to come near the house of my
grandfather. She seems to have no kind of fear even of our roughest men;
and yet she looks with reverence and awe upon the Counsellor. As for the
wickedness, and theft, and revelry around her, she says it is no concern
of hers, and they know their own business best. By this way of regarding
men she has won upon our riders, so that she is almost free from all
control of place and season, and is allowed to pass where none even of
the youths may go. Being so wide, and short, and flat, she has none to
pay her compliments; and, were there any, she would scorn them, as not
being Cornishmen. Sometimes she wanders far, by moonlight, on the moors
and up the rivers, to give her father (as she says) another chance of
finding her, and she comes back not a wit defeated, or discouraged, or
depressed, but confident that he is only waiting for the proper time.

"Herein she sets me good example of a patience and contentment hard for
me to imitate. Oftentimes I am vexed by things I cannot meddle with, yet
which cannot be kept from me, that I am at the point of flying from this
dreadful valley, and risking all that can betide me in the unknown outer
world. If it were not for my grandfather, I would have done so long ago;
but I cannot bear that he should die with no gentle hand to comfort him;
and I fear to think of the conflict that must ensue for the government,
if there be a disputed succession.

"Ah me! We are to be pitied greatly, rather than condemned, by people
whose things we have taken from them; for I have read, and seem almost
to understand about it, that there are places on the earth where gentle
peace, and love of home, and knowledge of one's neighbours prevail, and
are, with reason, looked for as the usual state of things. There honest
folk may go to work in the glory of the sunrise, with hope of coming
home again quite safe in the quiet evening, and finding all their
children; and even in the darkness they have no fear of lying down, and
dropping off to slumber, and hearken to the wind of night, not as to an
enemy trying to find entrance, but a frien