who, and have no right to know, no doubt, but she must be a wicked
thing--if somebody else had been taken so with a pain all round the
heart, John, and no power of telling it, perhaps you would have coaxed,
and kissed her, and come a little nearer, and made opportunity to be
very loving.'

Now this was so exactly what I had tried to do to Lorna, that my breath
was almost taken away at Annie's so describing it. For a while I could
not say a word, but wondered if she were a witch, which had never been
in our family: and then, all of a sudden, I saw the way to beat her,
with the devil at my elbow.

'From your knowledge of these things, Annie, you must have had them done
to you. I demand to know this very moment who has taken such liberties.'

'Then, John, you shall never know, if you ask in that manner. Besides,
it was no liberty in the least at all, Cousins have a right to do
things--and when they are one's godfather--' Here Annie stopped quite
suddenly having so betrayed herself; but met me in the full moonlight,
being resolved to face it out, with a good face put upon it.

'Alas, I feared it would come to this,' I answered very sadly; 'I know
he has been here many a time, without showing himself to me. There is
nothing meaner than for a man to sneak, and steal a young maid's heart,
without her people knowing it.'

'You are not doing anything of that sort yourself then, dear John, are
you?'

'Only a common highwayman!' I answered, without heeding her; 'a man
without an acre of his own, and liable to hang upon any common, and no
other right of common over it--'

'John,' said my sister, 'are the Doones privileged not to be hanged upon
common land?'

At this I was so thunderstruck, that I leaped in the air like a shot
rabbit, and rushed as hard as I could through the gate and across the
yard, and back into the kitchen; and there I asked Farmer Nicholas Snowe
to give me some tobacco, and to lend me a spare pipe.

This he did with a grateful manner, being now some five-fourths gone;
and so I smoked the very first pipe that ever had entered my lips till
then; and beyond a doubt it did me good, and spread my heart at leisure.

Meanwhile the reapers were mostly gone, to be up betimes in the morning;
and some were led by their wives; and some had to lead their wives
themselves, according to the capacity of man and wife respectively. But
Betty was as lively as ever, bustling about with every one, and looking
out for t