o make my blood to tingle, had no more of manners than to urge poor
Lorna onwards, hoping, perhaps, in depth of heart, that she might have
to hold by me, when the worst came to the worst of it. Therefore she
went on again.

CHAPTER XXI

LORNA ENDS HER STORY

'It is not a twelvemonth yet, although it seems ten years agone, since
I blew the downy globe to learn the time of day, or set beneath my
chin the veinings of the varnished buttercup, or fired the fox-glove
cannonade, or made a captive of myself with dandelion fetters; for then
I had not very much to trouble me in earnest, but went about, romancing
gravely, playing at bo-peep with fear, making for myself strong heroes
of gray rock or fir-tree, adding to my own importance, as the children
love to do.

'As yet I had not truly learned the evil of our living, the scorn of
law, the outrage, and the sorrow caused to others. It even was a point
with all to hide the roughness from me, to show me but the gallant side,
and keep in shade the other. My grandfather, Sir Ensor Doone, had given
strictest order, as I discovered afterwards, that in my presence all
should be seemly, kind, and vigilant. Nor was it very difficult to
keep most part of the mischief from me, for no Doone ever robs at home,
neither do they quarrel much, except at times of gambling. And though
Sir Ensor Doone is now so old and growing feeble, his own way he will
have still, and no one dare deny him. Even our fiercest and most mighty
swordsmen, seared from all sense of right or wrong, yet have plentiful
sense of fear, when brought before that white-haired man. Not that he is
rough with them, or querulous, or rebukeful; but that he has a strange
soft smile, and a gaze they cannot answer, and a knowledge deeper far
than they have of themselves. Under his protection, I am as safe from
all those men (some of whom are but little akin to me) as if I slept
beneath the roof of the King's Lord Justiciary.

'But now, at the time I speak of, one evening of last summer, a horrible
thing befell, which took all play of childhood from me. The fifteenth
day of last July was very hot and sultry, long after the time of
sundown; and I was paying heed of it, because of the old saying that if
it rain then, rain will fall on forty days thereafter. I had been long
by the waterside at this lower end of the valley, plaiting a little
crown of woodbine crocketed with sprigs of heath--to please my
grandfather, who likes to se