‘Allow me, madam, by your good leave. Here is a lady, Counsellor, of great repute in this part of the country, who charges the Doones with having unjustly slain her husband—’

‘Murdered him! murdered him!’ cried my mother, ‘if ever there was a murder. Oh, sir! oh, sir! you know it.’

‘The perfect rights and truth of the case is all I wish to know,’ said the old man, very loftily: ‘and justice shall be done, madam.’

‘Oh, I pray you—pray you, sirs, make no matter of business of it. God from Heaven, look on me!’

‘Put the case,’ said the Counsellor.

‘The case is this,’ replied Sir Ensor, holding one hand up to mother: ‘This lady’s worthy husband was slain, it seems, upon his return from the market at Porlock, no longer ago than last Saturday night. Madam, amend me if I am wrong.’

‘No longer, indeed, indeed, sir. Sometimes it seems a twelvemonth, and sometimes it seems an hour.’

‘Cite his name,’ said the Counsellor, with his eyes still rolling inwards.

‘Master John Ridd, as I understand. Counsellor, we have heard of him often; a worthy man and a peaceful one, who meddled not with our duties. Now, if any of our boys have been rough, they shall answer it dearly. And yet I can scarce believe it. For the folk about these parts are apt to misconceive of our sufferings, and to have no feeling for us. Counsellor, you are our record, and very stern against us; tell us how this matter was.’

‘Oh, Counsellor!’ my mother cried; ‘Sir Counsellor, you will be fair: I see it in your countenance. Only tell me who it was, and set me face to face with him, and I will bless you, sir, and God shall bless you, and my children.’

The square man with the long grey beard, quite unmoved by anything, drew back to the door and spoke, and his voice was like a fall of stones in the bottom of a mine.

‘Few words will be enow for this. Four or five of our best-behaved and most peaceful gentlemen went to the little market at Porlock with a lump of money. They bought some household stores and comforts at a very high price, and pricked upon the homeward road, away from vulgar revellers. When they drew bridle to rest their horses, in the shelter of a peat-rick, the night being dark and sudden, a robber of great size and strength rode into the midst of them, thinking to kill or terrify. His arrogance and hardihood at the first amazed them, but they would not give up without a blow goods which were on trust with them. He had smitten three of them senseless, for the power of his arm was terrible; whereupon the last man tried to ward his blow with a pistol. Carver, sir, it was, our brave and noble Carver, who saved the lives of his brethren and his own; and glad enow they were to escape. Notwithstanding, we hoped it might be only a flesh-wound, and not to speed him in his sins.’

As this atrocious tale of lies turned up joint by joint before her, like a ‘devil’s coach-horse,’* mother was too much amazed to do any more than look at him, as if the earth must open. But the only thing that opened was the great brown eyes of the Counsellor, which rested on my mother’s face with a dew of sorrow, as he spoke of sins.

* The cock-tailed beetle has earned this name in the West of England.

She, unable to bear them, turned suddenly on Sir Ensor, and caught (as she fancied) a smile on his lips, and a sense of quiet enjoyment.