“As yet I had not truly learned the evil of our living, the scorn of law, the outrage, and the sorrow caused to others.  It even was a point with all to hide the roughness from me, to show me but the gallant side, and keep in shade the other.  My grandfather, Sir Ensor Doone, had given strictest order, as I discovered afterwards, that in my presence all should be seemly, kind, and vigilant.  Nor was it very difficult to keep most part of the mischief from me, for no Doone ever robs at home, neither do they quarrel much, except at times of gambling.  And though Sir Ensor Doone is now so old and growing feeble, his own way he will have still, and no one dare deny him.  Even our fiercest and most mighty swordsmen, seared from all sense of right or wrong, yet have plentiful sense of fear, when brought before that white-haired man.  Not that he is rough with them, or querulous, or rebukeful; but that he has a strange soft smile, and a gaze they cannot answer, and a knowledge deeper far than they have of themselves.  Under his protection, I am as safe from all those men (some of whom are but little akin to me) as if I slept beneath the roof of the King’s Lord Justiciary.

“But now, at the time I speak of, one evening of last summer, a horrible thing befell, which took all play of childhood from me.  The fifteenth day of last July was very hot and sultry, long after the time of sundown; and I was paying heed of it, because of the old saying that if it rain then, rain will fall on forty days thereafter.  I had been long by the waterside at this lower end of the valley, plaiting a little crown of woodbine crocketed with sprigs of heath—­to please my grandfather, who likes to see me gay at supper-time.  Being proud of my tiara, which had cost some trouble, I set it on my head at once, to save the chance of crushing, and carrying my gray hat, ventured by a path not often trod.  For I must be home at the supper-time, or grandfather would be exceeding wrath; and the worst of his anger is that he never condescends to show it.

“Therefore, instead of the open mead, or the windings of the river, I made short cut through the ash-trees covert which lies in the middle of our vale, with the water skirting or cleaving it.  You have never been up so far as that—­at least to the best of my knowledge—­but you see it like a long gray spot, from the top of the cliffs above us.  Here I was not likely to meet any of our people because the young ones are afraid of some ancient tale about it, and the old ones have no love of trees where gunshots are uncertain.

“It was more almost than dusk, down below the tree-leaves, and I was eager to go through, and be again beyond it.  For the gray dark hung around me, scarcely showing shadow; and the little light that glimmered seemed to come up from the ground.  For the earth was strown with the winter-spread and coil of last year’s foliage, the lichened claws of chalky twigs, and the numberless decay which gives a light in its decaying.  I, for my part, hastened shyly, ready to draw back and run from hare, or rabbit, or small field-mouse.