Slain By The Doones | Page 5

rage, for to talk of a warrant
was unpleasant to them.
"'Good fellow, thou mayest spin spider's webs, or jib up and down like
a gnat,' said one, 'but such tricks are not lawful upon land of ours.
Therefore render up thy spoil.'
"Squire walked up from the pebbles at that, and he stood before the
three of them, as tall as any of them. And he said, 'You be young men,
but I am old. Nevertheless, I will not be robbed by three, or by thirty of
you. If you be cowards enough, come on.'
"Two of them held off, and I heard them say, 'Let him alone, he is a
brave old cock.' For you never seed anyone look more braver, and his
heart was up with righteousness. But the other, who seemed to be the

oldest of the three, shouted out something, and put his leg across, and
made at the squire with a long blue thing that shone in the sun, like a
looking-glass. And the squire, instead of turning round to run away as
he should have, led at him with the thick end of the fishing rod, to
which he had bound an old knife of Mother Pring's for to stick it in the
grass, while he put his flies on. And I heard the old knife strike the man
in his breast, and down he goes dead as a door-nail. And before I could
look again almost, another man ran a long blade into squire, and there
he was lying as straight as a lath, with the end of his white beard as red
as a rose. At that I was so scared that I couldn't look no more, and the
water came bubbling into my mouth, and I thought I was at home along
of mother.
"By and by, I came back to myself with my face full of scratches in a
bush, and the sun was going low, and the place all as quiet as Cheriton
church. But the noise of the water told me where I was; and I got up,
and ran for the life of me, till I came to the goyal. And then I got into a
fuzz-rick, and slept all night, for I durstn't go home to tell Mother Pring.
But I just took a look before I began to run, and the Doone that was
killed was gone away, but the squire lay along with his arms stretched
out, as quiet as a sheep before they hang him up to drain."
CHAPTER III.
--WISE COUNSEL.
Some pious people seem not to care how many of their dearest hearts
the Lord in heaven takes from them. How well I remember that in later
life, I met a beautiful young widow, who had loved her husband with
her one love, and was left with twin babies by him. I feared to speak,
for I had known him well, and thought her the tenderest of the tender,
and my eyes were full of tears for her. But she looked at me with some
surprise, and said: "You loved my Bob, I know," for he was a cousin of
my own, and as good a man as ever lived, "but, Sylvia, you must not
commit the sin of grieving for him."
It may be so, in a better world, if people are allowed to die there; but as

long as we are here, how can we help being as the Lord has made us?
The sin, as it seems to me, would be to feel or fancy ourselves
case-hardened against the will of our Maker, which so often is--that we
should grieve. Without a thought how that might be, I did the natural
thing, and cried about the death of my dear father until I was like to
follow him. But a strange thing happened in a month or so of time,
which according to Deborah saved my life, by compelling other
thoughts to come. My father had been buried in a small churchyard,
with nobody living near it, and the church itself was falling down,
through scarcity of money on the moor. The Warren, as our wood was
called, lay somewhere in the parish of Brendon, a straggling country,
with a little village somewhere, and a blacksmith's shop and an ale
house, but no church that anyone knew of, till you came to a place
called Cheriton. And there was a little church all by itself, not easy to
find, though it had four bells, which nobody dared to ring, for fear of
his head and the burden above it. But a boy would go up the first
Sunday of each month, and strike the liveliest of them with a poker
from the smithy. And then a brave parson, who