week you were everything.'

Here mother burst out crying again, not loudly, but turning quietly,
because she knew that no one now would ever care to wipe the tears. And
fifty or a hundred things, of weekly and daily happening, came across my
mother, so that her spirit fell like slackening lime.

'This matter must be seen to; it shall be seen to at once,' the old man
answered, moved a little in spite of all his knowledge. 'Madam, if any
wrong has been done, trust the honour of a Doone; I will redress it to
my utmost. Come inside and rest yourself, while I ask about it. What was
your good husband's name, and when and where fell this mishap?'

'Deary me,' said mother, as he set a chair for her very polite, but she
would not sit upon it; 'Saturday morning I was a wife, sir; and Saturday
night I was a widow, and my children fatherless. My husband's name was
John Ridd, sir, as everybody knows; and there was not a finer or better
man in Somerset or Devon. He was coming home from Porlock market, and a
new gown for me on the crupper, and a shell to put my hair up--oh, John,
how good you were to me!'

Of that she began to think again, and not to believe her sorrow, except
as a dream from the evil one, because it was too bad upon her, and
perhaps she would awake in a minute, and her husband would have the
laugh of her. And so she wiped her eyes and smiled, and looked for
something.

'Madam, this is a serious thing,' Sir Ensor Doone said graciously, and
showing grave concern: 'my boys are a little wild, I know. And yet I
cannot think that they would willingly harm any one. And yet--and yet,
you do look wronged. Send Counsellor to me,' he shouted, from the door
of his house; and down the valley went the call, 'Send Counsellor to
Captain.'

Counsellor Doone came in ere yet my mother was herself again; and if any
sight could astonish her when all her sense of right and wrong was gone
astray with the force of things, it was the sight of the Counsellor.
A square-built man of enormous strength, but a foot below the Doone
stature (which I shall describe hereafter), he carried a long grey beard
descending to the leather of his belt. Great eyebrows overhung his face,
like ivy on a pollard oak, and under them two large brown eyes, as of an
owl when muting. And he had a power of hiding his eyes, or showing them
bright, like a blazing fire. He stood there with his beaver off, and
mother tried to look at him, but he seemed not to descry