with our hands laid to our cars. At first there was nothing to hear, except the panting of the horses, and the trickle of the caving drops from our head-covers and clothing, and the soft sounds of the lonely night, that make us feel, and try not to think. Then there came a mellow noise, very low and mournsome, not a sound to be afraid of, but to long to know the meaning, with a soft rise of the hair. Three times it came and went again, as the shaking of a thread might pass away into the distance; and then I touched John Fry to know that there was something near me.
"Doon't 'e be a vule, Jan! Vaine moozick as iver I 'eer. God bless the man as made un doo it."
"Have they hanged one of the Dooncs then, John?"
"Hush, lad; never talk laikc o' thiccy. Hang a Doone! God knoweth, the King would hang pretty quick, if her did."
"Then who is it in the chains, John?"
I felt my spirit rise as I asked; for now I had crossed Exmoor so often as to hope that the people sometimes deserved it, and think that it might be a lesson to the rogues who unjustly loved the mutton they were never born to. But, of course, they were born to hanging, when they set themselves so high.
"It be nawbody," said John, "vor us to make a fush about. Belong to t'other zide o', the moor, and come staling shape to our zide. Red Jem Hannaford his name. Thank God for him to be hanged, lad; and good cess to his soul, for craikin' zo."
So the sound of the quiet swinging led us very modestly, as it came and went on the wind, loud and low pretty regularly, even as far as the foot of the gibbet where the four cross-ways are.
"Vamous job this here," cried John, looking up to be sure of it, because there were so many;" here be my own nick on the post. Red Jem, too, and no doubt of him; he do hang so handsome like, and his ribs up laike a horse a'most. God bless them as discoovered the way to make a rogue so useful. Good naight to thee, Jem, my lad; and not break thy drames with the craikin'."
John Fry shook his bridle-arm, and smote upon Smiler merrily, as he jogged into the homeward track from the guiding of the body. But I was sorry for Red Jem, and wanted to know more about him, and whether he might not have avoided this miserable end, and what his wife and children thought of it, if, indeed, he had any. But John would talk no more about it; and perhaps he was moved with a lonesome feeling, as the creaking sound came after us.
"Hould thee tongue, lad," he said sharply; "us be naigh the Doone-track now, two maile from Dunkery Beacon hill, the haighest place of Hexmoor. So happen they be abroad to-naight, us must crawl on our belly-places, boy."
I knew at once what he meant,—those bloody Dooncs of Bagworthy, the awe of all Devon and Somerset, outlaws, traitors, murderers. My little legs
