ing a dozen medicine bottles,
and scattering leeches right and left, she managed to get into my arms,
although they could not hold her. She laid her panting warm young breast
on the place where they meant to bleed me, and she set my pale face up;
and she would not look at me, having greater faith in kissing.

I felt my life come back, and warm; I felt my trust in women flow; I
felt the joys of living now, and the power of doing it. It is not a
moment to describe; who feels can never tell of it. But the rush of
Lorna's tears, and the challenge of my bride's lips, and the throbbing
of my wife's heart (now at last at home on mine), made me feel that the
world was good, and not a thing to be weary of.

Little more have I to tell. The doctor was turned out at once; and
slowly came back my former strength, with a darling wife, and good
victuals. As for Lorna, she never tired of sitting and watching me eat
and eat. And such is her heart that she never tires of being with me
here and there, among the beautiful places, and talking with her arm
around me--so far at least as it can go, though half of mine may go
round her--of the many fears and troubles, dangers and discouragements,
and worst of all the bitter partings, which we used to have, somehow.

There is no need for my farming harder than becomes a man of weight.
Lorna has great stores of money, though we never draw it out, except for
some poor neighbor; unless I find her a sumptuous dress, out of her own
perquisites. And this she always looks upon as a wondrous gift from me;
and kisses me much when she puts it on, and walks like the noble woman
she is. And yet I may never behold it again; for she gets back to her
simple clothes, and I love her the better in them. I believe that she
gives half the grandeur away, and keeps the other half for the children.

As for poor Tom Faggus, every one knows his bitter adventures, when his
pardon was recalled, because of his journey to Sedgemoor. Not a child
in the country, I doubt, but knows far more than I do of Tom's most
desperate doings. The law had ruined him once, he said; and then he had
been too much for the law: and now that a quiet life was his object,
here the base thing came after him. And such was his dread of this
evil spirit, that being caught upon Barnstaple Bridge, with soldiers
at either end of it (yet doubtful about approaching him), he set his
strawberry mare, sweet Winnie, at the left-hand parapet, with a whisper