Now I only set down that to show how perverse those foreign people are.  They will drink their wretched heartless stuff, such as they call claret, or wine of Medoc, or Bordeaux, or what not, with no more meaning than sour rennet, stirred with the pulp from the cider press, and strained through the cap of our Betty.  This is very well for them; and as good as they deserve, no doubt, and meant perhaps by the will of God, for those unhappy natives.  But to bring it over to England and set it against our home-brewed ale (not to speak of wines from Portugal) and sell it at ten times the price, as a cure for British bile, and a great enlightenment; this I say is the vilest feature of the age we live in.

Madam Benita Odam—­for the name of the man who turned the wheel proved to be John Odam—­showed me into a little room containing two chairs and a fir-wood table, and sat down on a three-legged seat and studied me very steadfastly.  This she had a right to do; and I, having all my clothes on now, was not disconcerted.  It would not become me to repeat her judgment upon my appearance, which she delivered as calmly as if I were a pig at market, and as proudly as if her own pig.  And she asked me whether I had ever got rid of the black marks on my breast.

Not wanting to talk about myself (though very fond of doing so, when time and season favour) I led her back to that fearful night of the day when first I had seen her.  She was not desirous to speak of it, because of her own little children; however, I drew her gradually to recollection of Lorna, and then of the little boy who died, and the poor mother buried with him.  And her strong hot nature kindled, as she dwelled upon these things; and my wrath waxed within me; and we forgot reserve and prudence under the sense of so vile a wrong.  She told me (as nearly as might be) the very same story which she had told to Master Jeremy Stickles; only she dwelled upon it more, because of my knowing the outset.  And being a woman, with an inkling of my situation, she enlarged upon the little maid, more than to dry Jeremy.

“Would you know her again?” I asked, being stirred by these accounts of Lorna, when she was five years old:  “would you know her as a full-grown maiden?”

“I think I should,” she answered; “it is not possible to say until one sees the person; but from the eyes of the little girl, I think that I must know her.  Oh, the poor young creature!  Is it to be believed that the cannibals devoured her!  What a people you are in this country!  Meat, meat, meat!”

As she raised her hands and eyes in horror at our carnivorous propensities, to which she clearly attributed the disappearance of Lorna, I could scarce help laughing, even after that sad story.  For though it is said at the present day, and will doubtless be said hereafter, that the Doones had devoured a baby once, as they came up Porlock hill, after fighting hard in the market-place, I knew that the tale was utterly false; for cruel and brutal as they were, their taste was very correct and choice, and indeed one might say fastidious.  Nevertheless I could not stop to argue that matter with her.