f strength fit for me to
encounter, such as I had never met, but would be glad to meet with;
having found no man of late who needed not my mercy at wrestling, or at
single-stick. And growing more and more uneasy, as I found no Lorna, I
would have tried to force the Doone Glen from the upper end, and take my
chance of getting back, but for Annie and her prayers.

Now that same night I think it was, or at any rate the next one, that I
noticed Betty Muxworthy going on most strangely. She made the queerest
signs to me, when nobody was looking, and laid her fingers on her lips,
and pointed over her shoulder. But I took little heed of her, being in
a kind of dudgeon, and oppressed with evil luck; believing too that all
she wanted was to have some little grumble about some petty grievance.

But presently she poked me with the heel of a fire-bundle, and passing
close to my ear whispered, so that none else could hear her, "Larna
Doo-un."

By these words I was so startled, that I turned round and stared at her;
but she pretended not to know it, and began with all her might to scour
an empty crock with a besom.

"Oh, Betty, let me help you! That work is much too hard for you," I
cried with a sudden chivalry, which only won rude answer.

"Zeed me adooing of thic, every naight last ten year, Jan, wiout vindin'
out how hard it wor. But if zo bee thee wants to help, carr peg's bucket
for me. Massy, if I ain't forgotten to fade the pegs till now."

Favouring me with another wink, to which I now paid the keenest heed,
Betty went and fetched the lanthorn from the hook inside the door. Then
when she had kindled it, not allowing me any time to ask what she was
after, she went outside, and pointed to the great bock of wash, and
riddlings, and brown hulkage (for we ground our own corn always), and
though she knew that Bill Dadds and Jem Slocombe had full work to carry
it on a pole (with another to help to sling it), she said to me as
quietly as a maiden might ask one to carry a glove, "Jan Ridd, carr thic
thing for me."

So I carried it for her, without any words; wondering what she was up
to next, and whether she had ever heard of being too hard on the willing
horse. And when we came to hog-pound, she turned upon me suddenly, with
the lanthorn she was bearing, and saw that I had the bock by one hand
very easily.

"Jan Ridd," she said, "there be no other man in England cud a' dood it.
Now thee shalt have Larna."

[Illustration: 27