“Often too I wonder at the odds of fortune, which made me (helpless as I am, and fond of peace and reading) the heiress of this mad domain, the sanctuary of unholiness.  It is not likely that I shall have much power of authority; and yet the Counsellor creeps up to be my Lord of the Treasury; and his son aspires to my hand, as of a Royal alliance.  Well, ‘honour among thieves,’ they say; and mine is the first honour:  although among decent folk perhaps, honesty is better.

“We should not be so quiet here, and safe from interruption but that I have begged one privilege rather than commanded it.  This was that the lower end, just this narrowing of the valley, where it is most hard to come at, might be looked upon as mine, except for purposes of guard.  Therefore none beside the sentries ever trespass on me here, unless it be my grandfather, or the Counsellor or Carver.

“By your face, Master Ridd, I see that you have heard of Carver Doone.  For strength and courage and resource he bears the first repute among us, as might well be expected from the son of the Counsellor.  But he differs from his father, in being very hot and savage, and quite free from argument.  The Counsellor, who is my uncle, gives his son the best advice; commending all the virtues, with eloquence and wisdom; yet himself abstaining from them accurately and impartially.

“You must be tired of this story, and the time I take to think, and the weakness of my telling; but my life from day to day shows so little variance.  Among the riders there is none whose safe return I watch for—­I mean none more than other—­and indeed there seems no risk, all are now so feared of us.  Neither of the old men is there whom I can revere or love (except alone my grandfather, whom I love with trembling):  neither of the women any whom I like to deal with, unless it be a little maiden whom I saved from starving.

[Illustration:  165.jpg Gwenny Carfax]

“A little Cornish girl she is, and shaped in western manner, not so very much less in width than if you take her lengthwise.  Her father seems to have been a miner, a Cornishman (as she declares) of more than average excellence, and better than any two men to be found in Devonshire, or any four in Somerset.  Very few things can have been beyond his power of performance, and yet he left his daughter to starve upon a peat-rick.  She does not know how this was done, and looks upon it as a mystery, the meaning of which will some day be clear, and redound to her father’s honour.  His name was Simon Carfax, and he came as the captain of a gang from one of the Cornish stannaries.  Gwenny Carfax, my young maid, well remembers how her father was brought up from Cornwall.  Her mother had been buried, just a week or so before; and he was sad about it, and had been off his work, and was ready for another job.  Then people came to him by night, and said that he must want a change, and everybody lost their wives, and work was the way to mend it.  So what