‘Madam,’ said Sir Ensor Doone—being born a gentleman, although a very bad one—’I crave pardon of you. My eyes are old, or I might have known. Now, if we have your husband prisoner, he shall go free without ransoms, because I have insulted you.’

‘Sir,’ said my mother, being suddenly taken away with sorrow, because of his gracious manner, ‘please to let me cry a bit.’

He stood away, and seemed to know that women want no help for that. And by the way she cried he knew that they had killed her husband. Then, having felt of grief himself, he was not angry with her, but left her to begin again.

‘Loth would I be,’ said mother, sobbing with her new red handkerchief, and looking at the pattern of it, ‘loth indeed, Sir Ensor Doone, to accuse any one unfairly. But I have lost the very best husband God ever gave to a woman; and I knew him when he was to your belt, and I not up to your knee, sir; and never an unkind word he spoke, nor stopped me short in speaking. All the herbs he left to me, and all the bacon-curing, and when it was best to kill a pig, and how to treat the maidens. Not that I would ever wish—oh, John, it seems so strange to me, and last week you were everything.’

Here mother burst out crying again, not loudly, but turning quietly, because she knew that no one now would ever care to wipe the tears. And fifty or a hundred things, of weekly and daily happening, came across my mother, so that her spirit fell like slackening lime.

‘This matter must be seen to; it shall be seen to at once,’ the old man answered, moved a little in spite of all his knowledge. ‘Madam, if any wrong has been done, trust the honour of a Doone; I will redress it to my utmost. Come inside and rest yourself, while I ask about it. What was your good husband’s name, and when and where fell this mishap?’

‘Deary me,’ said mother, as he set a chair for her very polite, but she would not sit upon it; ‘Saturday morning I was a wife, sir; and Saturday night I was a widow, and my children fatherless. My husband’s name was John Ridd, sir, as everybody knows; and there was not a finer or better man in Somerset or Devon. He was coming home from Porlock market, and a new gown for me on the crupper, and a shell to put my hair up—oh, John, how good you were to me!’

Of that she began to think again, and not to believe her sorrow, except as a dream from the evil one, because it was too bad upon her, and perhaps she would awake in a minute, and her husband would have the laugh of her. And so she wiped her eyes and smiled, and looked for something.

‘Madam, this is a serious thing,’ Sir Ensor Doone said graciously, and showing grave concern: ‘my boys are a little wild, I know. And yet I cannot think that they would willingly harm any one. And yet—and yet, you do look wronged. Send Counsellor to me,’ he shouted, from the door of his house; and down the valley went the call, ‘Send Counsellor to Captain.’

Counsellor Doone came in ere yet my mother was herself again; and if any sight could astonish her when all her sense of right and wrong was gone astray with the force of things, it was the sight of the Counsellor. A square-built man of enormous strength, but a foot below the Doone stature (which I shall describe hereafter), he carried a long grey beard descending to the leather of his belt. Great eyebrows overhung his face, like ivy on a pollard oak, and under them two large brown eyes, as of an owl when muting. And he had a power of hiding his eyes, or showing them bright, like a blazing fire. He stood there with his beaver off, and mother tried to look at him, but he seemed not to descry her.

‘Counsellor,’ said Sir Ensor Doone, standing back in his height from him, ‘here is a lady of good repute—’-

‘Oh, no, sir; only a woman.’