This put other thoughts in my head.  I waited till St. Valentine’s day, and then I dressed myself in my best clothes, and went up the Bagworthy water.  The stream, which once had taken my knees, now came only to my ankles, and with no great difficulty I climbed to the top of the cliff.  Here I beheld the loveliest sight, one glimpse of which was enough to make me kneel in the coldest water.  Lorna was coming singing towards me!  I could not see what her face was, my heart so awoke and trembled; only that her hair was flowing from a wreath of white violets.  She turned to fly, frightened, perhaps, at my great size; but I fell on the grass, as I had fallen seven years agone that day, and just said:  “Lorna Doone!”

“Master Ridd, are you mad,” she said.  “The patrol will be here presently.”

She led me, with many timid glances, to the hole in the rock which she had shown me before; by the right of this was a crevice, hung with green ivy, which opened into a mossy cave about twenty feet across.

“We shall be safe from interruption here,” said Lorna, “for I begged Sir Ensor that this place might be looked on as my bower.”

I had much ado, however, to get through the crevice, and, instead of being proud of my size, as it seemed to me she ought to be, Lorna laughed at me.  Thereupon it went hard with me not to kiss her, only it smote me that this would be a low advantage of her trust and helplessness.  She seemed to know what I would be at, and she liked me for my forbearance, because she was not in love with me yet.  As we sat in her bower, she talked about her dear self, and her talk was sad.

“Ah, Master Ridd,” she said, “you have a mother who loves you, and sisters, and a quiet home.  You do not know what loneliness is.  I get so full of anger at the violence and wickedness around me that I dare not give way to speech.  It is scarcely a twelvemonth since my cousin, Lord Alan Brandir, came from London and tried to rescue me.  Carver Doone killed him before my eyes.  Ah, you know Carver!”

Ay, I did.  It was he who slew my father.  I would not tell Lorna this, but in my slow way I began, to look forward to meeting Carver Doone, not for my father’s sake—­I had forgiven that—­but for Lorna’s.  I boded some harm to her, and before I left I arranged that if she were ever in need of help she should hang a black mantle on a stone that I could see from a neighbouring hill.

When I got home, I found a king’s messenger waiting for me, and, to the alarm of my dear mother and my sisters, I was taken to London to be examined by Chief Justice Jeffreys touching the Doone.  He was a fierce-looking man, with a bull-head, but he used me kindly—­maybe for Uncle Ben’s sake—­and I got back to Exmoor, none the worse for my journey to the great city of London.  But I lost all delight in my homecoming when I went to the hill overlooking Glen Doone, and saw that the stone was covered with a mantle.  Off I set to climb the cliff above the Bagworthy water, and there I found Lorna in a sad state of mind.