so that her own heart
beat worse than if she were baking; the men (as I said before) came
downstairs, and stamped around the baby.

'Rowland, is the bacon good?' one of them asked with an oath or two; 'it
is too bad of Carver to go off with the only prize, and leave us in a
starving cottage; and not enough to eat for two of us. Fetch down the
staves of the rack, my boy. What was farmer to have for supper?'

'Naught but an onion or two, and a loaf and a rasher of rusty bacon.
These poor devils live so badly, they are not worth robbing.'

'No game! Then let us have a game of loriot with the baby! It will
be the best thing that could befall a lusty infant heretic. Ride a
cock-horse to Banbury Cross. Bye, bye, baby Bunting; toss him up, and
let me see if my wrist be steady.'

The cruelty of this man is a thing it makes me sick to speak of; enough
that when the poor baby fell (without attempt at cry or scream, thinking
it part of his usual play, when they tossed him up, to come down again),
the maid in the oven of the back-kitchen, not being any door between,
heard them say as follows,--

'If any man asketh who killed thee,
Say 'twas the Doones of Bagworthy.' *

* Always pronounced 'Badgery.'

Now I think that when we heard this story, and poor Kit Badcock came all
around, in a sort of half-crazy manner, not looking up at any one,
but dropping his eyes, and asking whether we thought he had been
well-treated, and seeming void of regard for life, if this were all the
style of it; then having known him a lusty man, and a fine singer in an
ale-house, and much inclined to lay down the law, as show a high hand
about women, I really think that it moved us more than if he had gone
about ranting, and raving, and vowing revenge upon every one.

CHAPTER LXX

COMPELLED TO VOLUNTEER

There had been some trouble in our own home during the previous autumn,
while yet I was in London. For certain noted fugitives from the army
of King Monmouth (which he himself had deserted, in a low and currish
manner), having failed to obtain free shipment from the coast near
Watersmouth, had returned into the wilds of Exmoor, trusting to
lurk, and be comforted among the common people. Neither were they
disappointed, for a certain length of time; nor in the end was their
disappointment caused by fault on our part. Major Wade was one of them;
an active and well-meaning man; but prone to fail in courage, upon
lasting trial; al