her side and put his strong arm round
her, and how he liked his bacon fried, and praised her kindly for
it--and so the tears were in her eyes, and nothing should gainsay them.

A tall old man, Sir Ensor Doone, came out with a bill-hook in his
hand, hedger's gloves going up his arms, as if he were no better than a
labourer at ditch-work. Only in his mouth and eyes, his gait, and most
of all his voice, even a child could know and feel that here was no
ditch-labourer. Good cause he has found since then, perhaps, to wish
that he had been one.

With his white locks moving upon his coat, he stopped and looked down
at my mother, and she could not help herself but curtsey under the fixed
black gazing.

'Good woman, you are none of us. Who has brought you hither? Young men
must be young--but I have had too much of this work.'

And he scowled at my mother, for her comeliness; and yet looked under
his eyelids as if he liked her for it. But as for her, in her depth of
love-grief, it struck scorn upon her womanhood; and in the flash she
spoke.

'What you mean I know not. Traitors! cut-throats! cowards! I am here to
ask for my husband.' She could not say any more, because her heart
was now too much for her, coming hard in her throat and mouth; but she
opened up her eyes at him.

'Madam,' said Sir Ensor Doone--being born a gentleman, although a very
bad one--'I crave pardon of you. My eyes are old, or I might have known.
Now, if we have your husband prisoner, he shall go free without ransoms,
because I have insulted you.'

'Sir,' said my mother, being suddenly taken away with sorrow, because of
his gracious manner, 'please to let me cry a bit.'

He stood away, and seemed to know that women want no help for that. And
by the way she cried he knew that they had killed her husband. Then,
having felt of grief himself, he was not angry with her, but left her to
begin again.

'Loth would I be,' said mother, sobbing with her new red handkerchief,
and looking at the pattern of it, 'loth indeed, Sir Ensor Doone, to
accuse any one unfairly. But I have lost the very best husband God ever
gave to a woman; and I knew him when he was to your belt, and I not up
to your knee, sir; and never an unkind word he spoke, nor stopped
me short in speaking. All the herbs he left to me, and all the
bacon-curing, and when it was best to kill a pig, and how to treat the
maidens. Not that I would ever wish--oh, John, it seems so strange to
me, and last