be Stickles's
chief mate; and so he went back and fetched his comrades, bringing their
weapons, but leaving their horses behind. As it happened there were
but four of them; however, to have even these was a help; and I started
again at full speed for my home; for the men must follow afoot, and
cross our river high up on the moorland.

This took them a long way round, and the track was rather bad to find,
and the sky already darkening; so that I arrived at Plover's Barrows
more than two hours before them. But they had done a sagacious thing,
which was well worth the delay; for by hoisting their flag upon the
hill, they fetched the two watchmen from the Foreland, and added them to
their number.

It was lucky that I came home so soon; for I found the house in a great
commotion, and all the women trembling. When I asked what the matter
was, Lorna, who seemed the most self-possessed, answered that it was all
her fault, for she alone had frightened them. And this in the following
manner. She had stolen out to the garden towards dusk, to watch some
favourite hyacinths just pushing up, like a baby's teeth, and just
attracting the fatal notice of a great house-snail at night-time. Lorna
at last had discovered the glutton, and was bearing him off in triumph
to the tribunal of the ducks, when she descried two glittering eyes
glaring at her steadfastly, from the elder-bush beyond the stream.
The elder was smoothing its wrinkled leaves, being at least two months
behind time; and among them this calm cruel face appeared; and she knew
it was the face of Carver Doone.

The maiden, although so used to terror (as she told me once before),
lost all presence of mind hereat, and could neither shriek nor fly, but
only gaze, as if bewitched. Then Carver Doone, with his deadly smile,
gloating upon her horror, lifted his long gun, and pointed full at
Lorna's heart. In vain she strove to turn away; fright had stricken her
stiff as stone. With the inborn love of life, she tried to cover the
vital part wherein the winged death must lodge--for she knew Carver's
certain aim--but her hands hung numbed, and heavy; in nothing but her
eyes was life.

With no sign of pity in his face, no quiver of relenting, but a
well-pleased grin at all the charming palsy of his victim, Carver Doone
lowered, inch by inch, the muzzle of his gun. When it pointed to the
ground, between her delicate arched insteps, he pulled the trigger,
and the bullet flung the moul