“Young man,” she said, “you must come with me.  I was gwain’ all the way to fetch thee.  Old man be dying; and her can’t die, or at least her won’t, without first considering thee.”

“Considering me!” I cried; “what can Sir Ensor Doone want with considering me?  Has Mistress Lorna told him?”

“All concerning thee, and thy doings; when she knowed old man were so near his end.  That vexed he was about thy low blood, a’ thought her would come to life again, on purpose for to bate ’ee.  But after all, there can’t be scarcely such bad luck as that.  Now, if her strook thee, thou must take it; there be no denaying of un.  Fire I have seen afore, hot and red, and raging; but I never seen cold fire afore, and it maketh me burn and shiver.”

And in truth, it made me both burn and shiver, to know that I must either go straight to the presence of Sir Ensor Doone, or give up Lorna, once for all, and rightly be despised by her.  For the first time of my life, I thought that she had not acted fairly.  Why not leave the old man in peace, without vexing him about my affair?  But presently I saw again that in this matter she was right; that she could not receive the old man’s blessing (supposing that he had one to give, which even a worse man might suppose), while she deceived him about herself, and the life she had undertaken.

Therefore, with great misgiving of myself, but no ill thought of my darling, I sent Watch home, and followed Gwenny; who led me along very rapidly, with her short broad form gliding down the hollow, from which she had first appeared.  Here at the bottom, she entered a thicket of gray ash stubs and black holly, with rocks around it gnarled with roots, and hung with masks of ivy.  Here in a dark and lonely corner, with a pixie ring before it, she came to a narrow door, very brown and solid, looking like a trunk of wood at a little distance.  This she opened, without a key, by stooping down and pressing it, where the threshold met the jamb; and then she ran in very nimbly, but I was forced to be bent in two, and even so without comfort.  The passage was close and difficult, and as dark as any black pitch; but it was not long (be it as it might), and in that there was some comfort.  We came out soon at the other end, and were at the top of Doone valley.  In the chilly dusk air, it looked most untempting, especially during that state of mind under which I was labouring.  As we crossed towards the Captain’s house, we met a couple of great Doones lounging by the waterside.  Gwenny said something to them, and although they stared very hard at me, they let me pass without hindrance.  It is not too much to say that when the little maid opened Sir Ensor’s door, my heart thumped, quite as much with terror as with hope of Lorna’s presence.

But in a moment the fear was gone, for Lorna was trembling in my arms, and my courage rose to comfort her.  The darling feared, beyond all things else, lest I should be offended with her for what she had said to her grandfather, and for dragging me into his presence; but I told her almost a falsehood (the first, and the last, that ever I did tell her), to wit, that I cared not that much—­and showed her the tip of my thumb as I said it—­for old Sir Ensor, and all his wrath, so long as I had his granddaughter’s love.