“‘That thou never shalt, sir,’ cried a voice as loud as a culverin; and Carver Doone had Alan Brandir as a spider hath a fly.  The boy made a little shriek at first, with the sudden shock and the terror; then he looked, methought, ashamed of himself, and set his face to fight for it.  Very bravely he strove and struggled, to free one arm and grasp his sword; but as well might an infant buried alive attempt to lift his gravestone.  Carver Doone, with his great arms wrapped around the slim gay body, smiled (as I saw by the flash from heaven) at the poor young face turned up to him; then (as a nurse bears off a child, who is loath to go to bed), he lifted the youth from his feet, and bore him away into the darkness.

“I was young then.  I am older now; older by ten years, in thought, although it is not a twelvemonth since.  If that black deed were done again, I could follow, and could combat it, could throw weak arms on the murderer, and strive to be murdered also.  I am now at home with violence; and no dark death surprises me.

“But, being as I was that night, the horror overcame me.  The crash of thunder overhead, the last despairing look, the death-piece framed with blaze of lightning—­my young heart was so affrighted that I could not gasp.  My breath went from me, and I knew not where I was, or who, or what.  Only that I lay, and cowered, under great trees full of thunder; and could neither count, nor moan, nor have my feet to help me.

“Yet hearkening, as a coward does, through the brushing of the wind, and echo of far noises, I heard a sharp sound as of iron, and a fall of heavy wood.  No unmanly shriek came with it, neither cry for mercy.  Carver Doone knows what it was; and so did Alan Brandir.”

Here Lorna Doone could tell no more, being overcome with weeping.  Only through her tears she whispered, as a thing too bad to tell, that she had seen that giant Carver, in a few days afterwards, smoking a little round brown stick, like those of her poor cousin.  I could not press her any more with questions, or for clearness; although I longed very much to know whether she had spoken of it to her grandfather or the Counsellor.  But she was now in such condition, both of mind and body, from the force of her own fear multiplied by telling it, that I did nothing more than coax her, at a distance humbly; and so that she could see that some one was at least afraid of her.  This (although I knew not women in those days, as now I do, and never shall know much of it), this, I say, so brought her round, that all her fear was now for me, and how to get me safely off, without mischance to any one.  And sooth to say, in spite of longing just to see if Master Carver could have served me such a trick—­as it grew towards the dusk, I was not best pleased to be there; for it seemed a lawless place, and some of Lorna’s fright stayed with me as I talked it away from her.

CHAPTER XXII