m homes of simple mind and
innocence. Yet not a single house stood there but was the home of
murder.

Two men led my mother down a steep and gliddery stair-way, like the
ladder of a hay-mow; and thence from the break of the falling water as
far as the house of the captain. And there at the door they left her
trembling, strung as she was, to speak her mind.

Now, after all, what right had she, a common farmer's widow, to take it
amiss that men of birth thought fit to kill her husband. And the Doones
were of very high birth, as all we clods of Exmoor knew; and we had
enough of good teaching now--let any man say the contrary--to feel that
all we had belonged of right to those above us. Therefore my mother was
half-ashamed that she could not help complaining.

But after a little while, as she said, remembrance of her husband came,
and the way he used to stand by her side and put his strong arm round
her, and how he liked his bacon fried, and praised her kindly for
it--and so the tears were in her eyes, and nothing should gainsay them.

A tall old man, Sir Ensor Doone, came out with a bill-hook in his
hand, hedger's gloves going up his arms, as if he were no better than a
labourer at ditch-work. Only in his mouth and eyes, his gait, and most
of all his voice, even a child could know and feel that here was no
ditch-labourer. Good cause he has found since then, perhaps, to wish
that he had been one.

With his white locks moving upon his coat, he stopped and looked down
at my mother, and she could not help herself but curtsey under the fixed
black gazing.

"Good woman, you are none of us. Who has brought you hither? Young men
must be young--but I have had too much of this work."

And he scowled at my mother, for her comeliness; and yet looked under
his eyelids as if he liked her for it. But as for her, in her depth of
love-grief, it struck scorn upon her womanhood; and in the flash she
spoke.

"What you mean I know not. Traitors! cut-throats! cowards! I am here to
ask for my husband." She could not say any more, because her heart
was now too much for her, coming hard in her throat and mouth; but she
opened up her eyes at him.

"Madam," said Sir Ensor Doone--being born a gentleman, although a very
bad one--"I crave pardon of you. My eyes are old, or I might have known.
Now, if we have your husband prisoner, he shall go free without ransoms,
because I have insulted you."

"Sir," said my mother, being suddenly taken a