each other, but in and out as skittles are; only that the first of all, which proved to be the captain's, was a sort of double house, or rather two houses joined together by a plank-bridge over the river.
Fourteen cots my mother counted, all very much of a pattern, and nothing to choose between them, unless it were the captain's. Deep in the quiet valley there, away from noise, and violence, and brawl, save that of the rivulet, any man would have deemed them homes of simple mind and innocence. Yet not a single house stood there but was the home of murder.
Two men led my mother down a steep and gliddery stair-way, like the ladder of a hay-mow; and thence, from the break of the falling water, as far as the house of the captain. And there at the door, they left her trembling, strung as she was, to speak her mind.
Now, after all, what right had she, a common farmer's widow, to take it amiss that men of birth thought fit to kill her husband? And the Doones were of very high birth, as all we clods of Exmoor knew; and we had enough of good teaching now—let any man say the contrary—to feel that all we had belonged of right to those above us. Therefore my mother was half-ashamed, that she could not help complaining.
But after a little while, as she said, remembrance of her husband came, and the way he used to stand by her side and put his strong arm round her, and how he liked his bacon fried, and praised her kindly for it,— and so the tears were in her eyes, and nothing should gainsay them.
A tall old man, Sir Ensor Doone, came out with a bill-hook in his hand, and hedger's gloves going up his arms, as if he were no better than a labourer at
