ding-place beneath
the willow-tree (for I liked not to enter Lorna's bower, without her
permission; except just to peep that she was not there), and while I was
turning the ring in my pocket, having just seen the new moon, I
became aware of a great man coming leisurely down the valley. He had a
broad-brimmed hat, and a leather jerkin, and heavy jack-boots to his
middle thigh, and what was worst of all for me, on his shoulder he bore
a long carbine. Having nothing to meet him withal but my staff, and
desiring to avoid disturbance, I retired promptly into the chasm,
keeping the tree betwixt us that he might not descry me, and watching
from behind the jut of a rock, where now I had scraped myself a neat
little hole for the purpose.

Presently the great man reappeared, being now within fifty yards of me,
and the light still good enough, as he drew nearer for me to descry
his features: and though I am not a judge of men's faces, there was
something in his which turned me cold, as though with a kind of horror.
Not that it was an ugly face; nay, rather it seemed a handsome one, so
far as mere form and line might go, full of strength, and vigour, and
will, and steadfast resolution. From the short black hair above the
broad forehead, to the long black beard descending below the curt, bold
chin, there was not any curve or glimpse of weakness or of afterthought.
Nothing playful, nothing pleasant, nothing with a track of smiles;
nothing which a friend could like, and laugh at him for having. And
yet he might have been a good man (for I have known very good men so
fortified by their own strange ideas of God): I say that he might
have seemed a good man, but for the cold and cruel hankering of his
steel-blue eyes.

Now let no one suppose for a minute that I saw all this in a moment; for
I am very slow, and take a long time to digest things; only I like to
set down, and have done with it, all the results of my knowledge, though
they be not manifold. But what I said to myself, just then, was no more
than this: "What a fellow to have Lorna!" Having my sense of right so
outraged (although, of course, I would never allow her to go so far as
that), I almost longed that he might thrust his head in to look after
me. For there I was, with my ash staff clubbed, ready to have at him,
and not ill inclined to do so; if only he would come where strength, not
firearms, must decide it. However, he suspected nothing of my dangerous
neighbourhood, bu