wound, while he was bleeding inwardly. His brothers and cousins laid him softly on a bank of whortlc-berries, and just rode back to the lonely hamlet, where he had taken his death-wound. No man, nor woman, was left in the morning-, nor house for any to dwell in, only a child with its reason gone.[1]
This affair made prudent people find more reasons to let them alone, than to meddle with them; and now they had so entrenched themselves, and waxed so strong in number, that nothing less than a troop of soldiers could wisely enter their premises; and even so it might turn out ill, as perchance we shall see by and by.
For not to mention the strength of the place, which I shall describe in its proper order, when I come to visit it, there was not one among them but was a mighty man, straight and tall, and wide, and fit to lift four hundred-weight. If son or grandson of old Doone, or one of the northern retainers, failed at the age of twenty, while standing on his naked feet, to touch with his forehead the lintel of Sir Ensor's door, and to fill the door-frame with his shoulders from sidepost even to sidepost, he was led away to the narrow pass, which made their valley so desperate, and thrust from the crown with ignominy, to get his own living honestly. Now, the measure of that doorway is, or rather was, I ought to say, six feet and one inch lengthwise, and two feet all but two inches taken cross-ways in the clear. Yet I not only have heard, but know, being so closely mixed with them, that no descendant of old Sir Ensor, neither relative of his (except, indeed the Counsellor, who was kept by them for his wisdom), and no more than two of their following, ever failed of that test, and relapsed to the difficult ways of honesty.
Not that I think anything great of a standard the like of that; for if they had set me in that door-frame at the age of twenty, it is like enough that I should have walked away with it on my shoulders, though I was not come to my full strength then; only I am speaking now of the average size of our neighbourhood, and the Doones were far beyond that. Moreover, they were taught to shoot with a heavy carabine, so delicately and wisely, that even a boy could pass a ball through a rabbit's head at a distance of fourscore yards. Some people may think nought of this, being in practice with longer shots from the tongue than from the shoulder; nevertheless, to do as above is, to my ignorance, very good work, if you can be sure to do it. Not one word do I believe of Robin Hood splitting peeled wands at seven-score yards, and such like. Whoever wrote such stories knew not how slippery a peeled wand is, even if one could hit it, and how it gives to the onset. Now, let him stick one in the ground, and take his bow and arrow at it, ten yards away, or even five.
Now, after all this which I have written, and all the rest which a reader will see, being quicker of mind than I am (who leave more than half behind me, like a man sowing wheat, with his dinner laid in the ditch too near his dog), it is much but what you will understand the Doones, far better than I did, or do even to this moment; and therefore none will doubt, when I tell them that our good
- ↑ This vile deed was done, beyond all doubt.
