and all the hostlers, stable-boys, and tapsters entirely
worshipped him.

I have been rather long, and perhaps tedious, in my account of him, lest
at any time hereafter his character should be misunderstood, and his
good name disparaged; whereas he was my second cousin, and the lover of
my--But let that bide. 'Tis a melancholy story.

He came again about three months afterwards, in the beginning of the
spring-time, and brought me a beautiful new carbine, having learned my
love of such things, and my great desire to shoot straight. But mother
would not let me have the gun, until he averred upon his honour that he
had bought it honestly. And so he had, no doubt, so far as it is honest
to buy with money acquired rampantly. Scarce could I stop to make my
bullets in the mould which came along with it, but must be off to the
Quarry Hill, and new target I had made there. And he taught me then
how to ride bright Winnie, who was grown since I had seen her, but
remembered me most kindly. After making much of Annie, who had a
wondrous liking for him--and he said he was her godfather, but God knows
how he could have been, unless they confirmed him precociously--away he
went, and young Winnie's sides shone like a cherry by candlelight.

Now I feel that of those boyish days I have little more to tell, because
everything went quietly, as the world for the most part does with us. I
began to work at the farm in earnest, and tried to help my mother, and
when I remembered Lorna Doone, it seemed no more than the thought of a
dream, which I could hardly call to mind. Now who cares to know how many
bushels of wheat we grew to the acre, or how the cattle milched till we
ate them, or what the turn of the seasons was? But my stupid self seemed
like to be the biggest of all the cattle; for having much to look after
the sheep, and being always in kind appetite, I grew four inches longer
in every year of my farming, and a matter of two inches wider; until
there was no man of my size to be seen elsewhere upon Exmoor. Let that
pass: what odds to any how tall or wide I be? There is no Doone's door
at Plover's Barrows and if there were I could never go through it. They
vexed me so much about my size, long before I had completed it, girding
at me with paltry jokes whose wit was good only to stay at home, that
I grew shame-faced about the matter, and feared to encounter a
looking-glass. But mother was very proud, and said she never could have
too much