and fine presence, and his beard shone
like a cascade of silver. It was not the manner of the young as yet to
argue with their elders, and though I might have been a little fluttered
by the comely gallant's lofty talk and gaze of daring melancholy, I said
good-bye to him in my heart, as I kissed my noble father. Shall I ever
cease to thank the Lord that I proved myself a good daughter then?

CHAPTER II.--BY A QUIET RIVER.

Living as we did all by ourselves, and five or six miles away from the
Robbers' Valley, we had felt little fear of the Doones hitherto, because
we had nothing for them to steal except a few books, the sight of which
would only make them swear and ride away. But now that I was full-grown,
and beginning to be accounted comely, my father was sometimes uneasy in
his mind, as he told Deborah, and she told me; for the outlaws showed
interest in such matters, even to the extent of carrying off young women
who had won reputation thus. Therefore he left Thomas Pring at home,
with the doors well-barred, and two duck guns loaded, and ordered me
not to quit the house until he should return with a creel of trout for
supper. Only our little boy Dick Hutchings was to go with him, to help
when his fly caught in the bushes.

My father set off in the highest spirits, as anglers always seem to do,
to balance the state in which they shall return; and I knew not, neither
did anyone else, what a bold stroke he was resolved upon. When it was
too late, we found out that, hearing so much of that strange race, he
desired to know more about them, scorning the idea that men of birth
could ever behave like savages, and forgetting that they had received
no chance of being tamed, as rough spirits are by the lessons of the
battlefield. No gentleman would ever dream of attacking an unarmed man,
he thought; least of all one whose hair was white. And so he resolved to
fish the brook which ran away from their stronghold, believing that he
might see some of them, and hoping for a peaceful interview.

We waited and waited for his pleasant face, and long, deliberate step
upon the steep, and cheerful shout for his Sylvia, to come and ease down
his basket, and say--"Well done, father!" But the shadows of the trees
grew darker, and the song of the gray-bird died out among them, and the
silent wings of the owl swept by, and all the mysterious sounds of night
in the depth of forest loneliness, and the glimmer of a star through
the leav