Slain By The Doones | Page 2

the heart of Exmoor, which had come to the Fords on the
spindle side, and had been overlooked when their patrimony was
confiscated by the Brewer. Of him I would speak with no contempt,
because he was ever as good as his word.
In the course of time, we had grown used to live according to our
fortunes. And I verily believe that we were quite content, and repined
but little at our lost importance. For my father was a very
simple-minded man, who had seen so much of uproarious life, and the
falsehood of friends, and small glitter of great folk, that he was glad to
fall back upon his own good will. Moreover he had his books, and me;
and as he always spoke out his thoughts, he seldom grudged to thank
the Lord for having left both of these to him. I felt a little jealous of his

books now and then, as a very poor scholar might be; but reason is the
proper guide for women, and we are quick enough in discerning it,
without having to borrow it from books.
At any rate now we were living in a wood, and trees were the only
creatures near us, to the best of our belief and wish. Few might say in
what part of the wood we lived, unless they saw the smoke ascending
from our single chimney; so thick were the trees, and the land they
stood on so full of sudden rise and fall. But a little river called the Lynn
makes a crooked border to it, and being for its size as noisy a water as
any in the world perhaps, can be heard all through the trees and leaves
to the very top of the Warren Wood. In the summer all this was sweet
and pleasant; but lonely and dreary and shuddersome, when the twigs
bore drops instead of leaves, and the ground would not stand to the foot,
and the play of light and shadow fell, like the lopping of a tree, into one
great lump.
Now there was a young man about this time, and not so very distant
from our place--as distances are counted there--who managed to make
himself acquainted with us, although we lived so privately. To me it
was a marvel, both why and how he did it; seeing what little we had to
offer, and how much we desired to live alone. But Mrs. Pring told me
to look in the glass, if I wanted to know the reason; and while I was
blushing with anger at that, being only just turned eighteen years, and
thinking of nobody but my father, she asked if I had never heard the
famous rhymes made by the wise woman at Tarrsteps:
"Three fair maids live upon Exymoor, The rocks, and the woods, and
the dairy-door. The son of a baron shall woo all three, But barren of
them all shall the young man be."
Of the countless things I could never understand, one of the very
strangest was how Deborah Pring, our only domestic, living in the
lonely depths of this great wood, and seeming to see nobody but
ourselves, in spite of all that contrived to know as much of the doings
of the neighbourhood as if she went to market twice a week. But my
father cared little for any such stuff; coming from a better part of the
world, and having been mixed with mighty issues and making of great

kingdoms, he never said what he thought of these little combings of
petty pie crust, because it was not worth his while. And yet he seemed
to take a kindly liking to the young De Wichehalse; not as a youth of
birth only, but as one driven astray perhaps by harsh and austere
influence. For his father, the baron, was a godly man,--which is much
to-the credit of anyone, growing rarer and rarer, as it does,--and there
should be no rasp against such men, if they would only bear in mind
that in their time they had been young, and were not quite so perfect
then. But lo! I am writing as if I knew a great deal more than I could
know until the harrow passed over me.
No one, however, need be surprised at the favour this young man
obtained with all who came into his converse. Handsome, and beautiful
as he was, so that bold maids longed to kiss him, it was the sadness in
his eyes, and the gentle sense of doom therein, together with a laughing
scorn of it, that made him come home to our nature, in a way that it
feels but cannot talk of. And he seemed to be of the past somehow,
although so young and bright and brave;