ter Stickles now was forced to address himself,
although he would rather have had one trooper than a score from the
very best trained bands. For these trained bands had afforded very good
soldiers, in the time of the civil wars, and for some years afterwards;
but now their discipline was gone; and the younger generation had seen
no real fighting. Each would have his own opinion, and would want to
argue it; and if he were not allowed, he went about his duty in such a
temper as to prove that his own way was the best.

Neither was this the worst of it; for Jeremy made no doubt but what (if
he could only get the militia to turn out in force) he might manage,
with the help of his own men, to force the stronghold of the enemy; but
the truth was that the officers, knowing how hard it would be to collect
their men at that time of the year, and in that state of the weather,
began with one accord to make every possible excuse. And especially
they pressed this point, that Bagworthy was not in their county; the
Devonshire people affirming vehemently that it lay in the shire of
Somerset, and the Somersetshire folk averring, even with imprecations,
that it lay in Devonshire. Now I believe the truth to be that the
boundary of the two counties, as well as of Oare and Brendon parishes,
is defined by the Bagworthy river; so that the disputants on both sides
were both right and wrong.

Upon this, Master Stickles suggested, and as I thought very sensibly,
that the two counties should unite, and equally contribute to the
extirpation of this pest, which shamed and injured them both alike. But
hence arose another difficulty; for the men of Devon said they would
march when Somerset had taken the field; and the sons of Somerset
replied that indeed they were quite ready, but what were their cousins
of Devonshire doing? And so it came to pass that the King's Commissioner
returned without any army whatever; but with promise of two hundred men
when the roads should be more passable. And meanwhile, what were we to
do, abandoned as we were to the mercies of the Doones, with only our own
hands to help us? And herein I grieved at my own folly, in having let
Tom Faggus go, whose wit and courage would have been worth at least half
a dozen men to us. Upon this matter I held long council with my good
friend Stickles; telling him all about Lorna's presence, and what I knew
of her history. He agreed with me that we could not hope to escape an
attack from th