er blade to swing and strike it up.

"Let her alone!" said Carver Doone, with a smile upon his cold and
corpselike face. "My sons, let the lady have her time. She is worthy to
be the mother of many a fine Doone."

The young men began to lounge about in a manner most provoking, as if
I had passed from their minds altogether; and some of them went to the
kitchen for victuals, and grumbled at our fare by the light of a lantern
which they had found upon a shelf. But I stood at my post, with my heart
beating, so that the long sword quivered like a candle. Of my life they
might rob me, but of my honour, never!

"Beautiful maiden! Who hath ever seen the like? Why, even Lorna hath not
such eyes."

Carver Doone came to the foot of the stairs and flashed the lantern
at me, and, thinking that he meant to make a rush for it, I thrust my
weapon forward; but at the same moment a great pair of arms was thrown
around me from behind by some villain who must have scaled my chamber
window, and backward I fell, with no sense or power left.

When my scattered wits came back I felt that I was being shaken
grievously, and the moon was dancing in my eyes through a mist of tears,
half blinding them. I remember how hard I tried to get my fingers up
to wipe my eyes, so as to obtain some knowledge; but jerk and bump and
helpless wonder were all that I could get or take; for my hands were
strapped, and my feet likewise, and I seemed like a wave going up and
down, without any judgment, upon the open sea.

But presently I smelled the wholesome smell which a horse of all animals
alone possesses, though sometimes a cow is almost as good, and then I
felt a mane coming into my hair, and then there was the sound of steady
feet moving just under me, with rise and fall and swing alternate, and a
sense of going forward. I was on the back of a great, strong horse,
and he was obeying the commands of man. Gradually I began to think, and
understood my awful plight. The Doones were taking me to Doone Glen to
be some cut-throat's light-of-love; perhaps to be passed from brute
to brute--me, Sylvia Ford, my father's darling, a proud and dainty and
stately maiden, of as good birth as any in this English realm. My heart
broke down as I thought of that, and all discretion vanished. Though my
hands were tied my throat was free, and I sent forth such a scream of
woe that the many-winding vale of Lynn, with all its wild waters could
not drown, nor with all its dumb