oldiers in their neighbourhood, united
very kindly to oppose the King's Commissioner. However, Jeremy had
contrived to conciliate the whole of them, not so much by anything
engaging in his deportment or delicate address, as by holding out bright
hopes that the plunder of the Doone Glen might become divisible among
the adjoining manors. Now I have never discovered a thing which the
lords of manors (at least in our part of the world) do not believe to
belong to themselves, if only they could get their rights. And it
did seem natural enough that if the Doones were ousted, and a nice
collection of prey remained, this should be parted among the people
having ancient rights of plunder. Nevertheless, Master Jeremy knew that
the soldiers would have the first of it, and the King what they could
not carry.

And perhaps he was punished justly for language so misleading, by the
general indignation of the people all around us, not at his failure, but
at himself, for that which he could in no wise prevent. And the stewards
of the manors rode up to our house on purpose to reproach him, and were
greatly vexed with all of us, because he was too ill to see them.

To myself (though by rights the last to be thought of, among so much
pain and trouble) Jeremy's wound was a great misfortune, in more ways
than one. In the first place, it deferred my chance of imparting either
to my mother or to Mistress Lorna my firm belief that the maid I loved
was not sprung from the race which had slain my father; neither could
he in any way have offended against her family. And this discovery I was
yearning more and more to declare to them; being forced to see (even
in the midst of all our warlike troubles) that a certain difference was
growing betwixt them both, and betwixt them and me. For although the
words of the Counsellor had seemed to fail among us, being bravely
met and scattered, yet our courage was but as wind flinging wide the
tare-seeds, when the sower casts them from his bag. The crop may not
come evenly, many places may long lie bare, and the field be all in
patches; yet almost every vetch will spring, and tiller out, and stretch
across the scatterings where the wind puffed.

And so dear mother and darling Lorna now had been for many a day
thinking, worrying, and wearing, about the matter between us. Neither
liked to look at the other, as they used to do; with mother admiring
Lorna's eyes, and grace, and form of breeding; and Lorna loving m