But he had his revenge in a short time.  Jeremy Stickler brought up two train-bands to storm Glen Doone, and they were beaten off with considerable loss.  Then I took the matter up, just when the Doones were emboldened by their victory to commit fresh crimes; or rather, the leadership was thrust upon me.  Carver Doone and one of his men entered the house of Kit Badcock, one of my neighbours, and killed his baby and carried off his wife.  Kit wandered about half crazy, and the people came flocking about me, and asked me to lead them against the Doones.  I resolved on a night-assault, and divided the men into two parties.  The Doone-gate was, I knew, impregnable, and it was there that the train-bands had failed.  I pretended to attack it, but led my best fighters up the waterfall.  The earliest notice the Doones had of our presence was the blazing of the logwood house where lived that villain Carver.

By the time they came from Doone-gate all the village was burning, and as soon as they got into easy distance we shot them down in the light of the flaming houses.  I did not fire.  I cared to meet none but Carver, and he did not appear.  He was the only Doone that escaped.  Every man I had with me had some wrong to avenge; some had lost their wives, others their daughters; the more fortunate had had all their sheep and cattle carried off, and every man avenged his wrong.  I was vexed at the escape of Carver.  It was no light thing to have a man of such power and resource and desperation left at large and furious.  When he saw all the houses in the valley flaming with a handsome blaze, and throwing a fine light around, such as he had often revelled in when he was the attacker, he turned his great black horse, and spurred it through Doone-gate, and he passed into the darkness before the yeomen I had posted there could bring him down.

V.—­The Duel at Wizard’s Slough

The only thing which pleased me was that Lorna was taken to London before I led the assault on Glen Doone.  Jeremy Stickler, a man with much knowledge of the law, discovered that she was a great heiress, and that her true title was Lady Lorna Dugal.  She was related to the Doones, and they had carried her off when a little child, and on her all the ambition of Sir Ensor Doone had turned.  The marriage he designed between her and Carver would have brought the outlaws the wealth necessary to retrieve their fortunes and recover their position in the world.  This strange news explained many things in their conduct towards Lorna, but it made me feel rather sad.  For it seemed to me that there was too great a difference between John Ridd, the yeoman farmer, and Lady Lorna, the heiress of the Earl of Lome.  Besides, she was now a ward of chancery, under the care of the great Lord Jeffreys, and I much doubted if he would consent to our marriage, even if she still remembered me amid the courtly splendour in which she moved.  Judge then of my joy when Lorna returned in the spring to our farm, as glad as a bird to get back to its nest.