Slain By The Doones | Page 4

places, when
all was dark, and expecting to be called out again and asked what had
made such a fool of me. And so the long night went at last, and no
comfort came in the morning. But I heard a great crying, sometime the
next day, and ran back from the wood to learn what it meant, for there I
had been searching up and down, not knowing whither I went or why.
And lo, it was little Dick Hutchings at our door, and Deborah Pring
held him by the coat-flap, and was beating him with one of my father's
sticks.
"I tell 'ee, they Doo-uns has done for 'un," the boy was roaring betwixt
his sobs; "dree on 'em, dree on 'em, and he've a killed one. The squire
be layin' as dead as a sto-un."
Mrs. Pring smacked him on the mouth, for she saw that I had heard it.
What followed I know not, for down I fell, and the sense of life went
from me.
There was little chance of finding Thomas Pring, or any other man to

help us, for neighbours were none, and Thomas was gone everywhere
he could think of to look for them. Was I likely to wait for night again,
and then talk for hours about it? I recovered my strength when the sun
went low; and who was Deborah Pring, to stop me? She would have
come, but I would not have it; and the strength of my grief took
command of her.
Little Dick Hutchings whistled now, I remember that he whistled, as he
went through the wood in front of me. Who had given him the breeches
on his legs and the hat upon his shallow pate? And the poor little
coward had skiddered away, and slept in a furze rick, till famine drove
him home. But now he was set up again by gorging for an hour, and
chattered as if he had done a great thing.
There must have been miles of rough walking through woods, and
tangles, and craggy and black boggy hollows, until we arrived at a wide
open space where two streams ran into one another.
"Thic be Oare watter," said the boy, "and t'other over yonner be
Badgefry. Squire be dead up there; plaise, Miss Sillie, 'ee can goo
vorrard and vaind 'un."
He would go no further; but I crossed the brook, and followed the
Badgery stream, without knowing, or caring to know, where I was. The
banks, and the bushes, and the rushing water went by me until I came
upon--but though the Lord hath made us to endure such things, he hath
not compelled us to enlarge upon them.
In the course of the night kind people came, under the guidance of
Thomas Pring, and they made a pair of wattles such as farmers use for
sheep, and carried home father and daughter, one sobbing and groaning
with a broken heart, and the other that should never so much as sigh
again. Troubles have fallen upon me since, as the will of the Lord is
always; but none that I ever felt like that, and for months everything
was the same to me.
But inasmuch as it has been said by those who should know better, that
my father in some way provoked his merciless end by those vile

barbarians, I will put into plainest form, without any other change,
except from outlandish words, the tale received from Dick Hutchings,
the boy, who had seen and heard almost everything while crouching in
the water and huddled up inside a bush.
"Squire had catched a tidy few, and he seemed well pleased with
himself, and then we came to a sort of a hollow place where one brook
floweth into the other. Here he was a-casting of his fly, most careful,
for if there was ever a trout on the feed, it was like to be a big one, and
lucky for me I was keeping round the corner when a kingfisher bird
flew along like a string-bolt, and there were three great men coming
round a fuzz-bush, and looking at squire, and he back to them. Down
goes I, you may say sure enough, with all of me in the water but my
face, and that stuck into a wutts-clump, and my teeth making holes in
my naked knees, because of the way they were shaking.
"'Ho, fellow!' one of them called out to squire, as if he was no better
than father is, 'who give thee leave to fish in our river?'
"'Open moor,' says squire, 'and belongeth to the king, if it belongeth to
anybody. Any of you gentlemen hold his majesty's warrant to forbid an
old officer of his?'
"That seemed to put them in a dreadful