ready for rape or murder. Two of them fell, and the rest hung back, to
think at their leisure what this was. They were not used to this sort of
thing: it was neither just nor courteous.

Being unable any longer to contain myself, as I thought of Lorna's
excitement at all this noise of firing, I came across the yard,
expecting whether they would shoot at me. However, no one shot at me;
and I went up to Carver Doone, whom I knew by his size in the moonlight,
and I took him by the beard, and said, "Do you call yourself a man?"

[Illustration: 437.jpg I took him by the beard]

For a moment he was so astonished that he could not answer. None had
ever dared, I suppose, to look at him in that way; and he saw that he
had met his equal, or perhaps his master. And then he tried a pistol at
me, but I was too quick for him.

"Now, Carver Doone, take warning," I said to him, very soberly; "you
have shown yourself a fool by your contempt of me. I may not be your
match in craft; but I am in manhood. You are a despicable villain. Lie
low in your native muck."

And with that word, I laid him flat upon his back in our straw-yard, by
a trick of the inner heel, which he could not have resisted (though his
strength had been twice as great as mine), unless he were a wrestler.
Seeing him down the others ran, though one of them made a shot at me,
and some of them got their horses, before our men came up; and some went
away without them. And among these last was Captain Carver who arose,
while I was feeling myself (for I had a little wound), and strode away
with a train of curses enough to poison the light of the moon.

We gained six very good horses, by this attempted rapine, as well as
two young prisoners, whom I had smitten by the clover-rick. And two
dead Doones were left behind, whom (as we buried them in the churchyard,
without any service over them), I for my part was most thankful that
I had not killed. For to have the life of a fellow-man laid upon one's
conscience--deserved he his death, or deserved it not--is to my sense of
right and wrong the heaviest of all burdens; and the one that wears most
deeply inwards, with the dwelling of the mind on this view and on that
of it.

I was inclined to pursue the enemy and try to capture more of them; but
Jeremy Stickles would not allow it, for he said that all the advantage
would be upon their side, if we went hurrying after them, with only the
moon to guide us. And who could tell but w