gave a long low growl; I
kept myself close as possible, and ordered the dog to be silent, and
presently saw a short figure approaching from a thickly-wooded hollow on
the left side of my hiding-place. It was the same figure I had seen once
before in the moonlight, at Plover's Barrows; and proved, to my great
delight, to be the little maid Gwenny Carfax. She started a moment, at
seeing me, but more with surprise than fear; and then she laid both her
hands upon mine, as if she had known me for twenty years.

"Young man," she said, "you must come with me. I was gwain' all the
way to fetch thee. Old man be dying; and her can't die, or at least her
won't, without first considering thee."

"Considering me!" I cried; "what can Sir Ensor Doone want with
considering me? Has Mistress Lorna told him?"

"All concerning thee, and thy doings; when she knowed old man were so
near his end. That vexed he was about thy low blood, a' thought her
would come to life again, on purpose for to bate 'ee. But after all,
there can't be scarcely such bad luck as that. Now, if her strook thee,
thou must take it; there be no denaying of un. Fire I have seen afore,
hot and red, and raging; but I never seen cold fire afore, and it maketh
me burn and shiver."

And in truth, it made me both burn and shiver, to know that I must
either go straight to the presence of Sir Ensor Doone, or give up Lorna,
once for all, and rightly be despised by her. For the first time of my
life, I thought that she had not acted fairly. Why not leave the old man
in peace, without vexing him about my affair? But presently I saw again
that in this matter she was right; that she could not receive the old
man's blessing (supposing that he had one to give, which even a worse
man might suppose), while she deceived him about herself, and the life
she had undertaken.

Therefore, with great misgiving of myself, but no ill thought of my
darling, I sent Watch home, and followed Gwenny; who led me along very
rapidly, with her short broad form gliding down the hollow, from which
she had first appeared. Here at the bottom, she entered a thicket of
gray ash stubs and black holly, with rocks around it gnarled with roots,
and hung with masks of ivy. Here in a dark and lonely corner, with a
pixie ring before it, she came to a narrow door, very brown and solid,
looking like a trunk of wood at a little distance. This she opened,
without a key, by stooping down and pressing it, where the th