Now when the service was over, we killed the King, and we brought him to life, at least fifty times in the churchyard:  and Sam Fry was mounted on a high gravestone, to tell every one all he knew of it.  But he knew no more than he had told us in the church, as before repeated:  upon which we were much disappointed with him, and inclined to disbelieve him; until he happily remembered that His Majesty had died in great pain, with blue spots on his breast and black spots all across his back, and these in the form of a cross, by reason of Papists having poisoned him.  When Sam called this to his remembrance (or to his imagination) he was overwhelmed, at once, with so many invitations to dinner, that he scarce knew which of them to accept; but decided in our favour.

Grieving much for the loss of the King, however greatly it might be (as the parson had declared it was, while telling us to pray against it) for the royal benefit, I resolved to ride to Porlock myself, directly after dinner, and make sure whether he were dead, or not.  For it was not by any means hard to suppose that Sam Fry, being John’s first cousin, might have inherited either from grandfather or grandmother some of those gifts which had made our John so famous for mendacity.  At Porlock I found that it was too true; and the women of the town were in great distress, for the King had always been popular with them:  the men, on the other hand, were forecasting what would be likely to ensue.

And I myself was of this number, riding sadly home again; although bound to the King as churchwarden now; which dignity, next to the parson’s in rank, is with us (as it ought to be in every good parish) hereditary.  For who can stick to the church like the man whose father stuck to it before him; and who knows all the little ins, and great outs, which must in these troublous times come across?

But though appointed at last, by virtue of being best farmer in the parish (as well as by vice of mismanagement on the part of my mother, and Nicholas Snowe, who had thoroughly mixed up everything, being too quick-headed); yet, while I dwelled with pride upon the fact that I stood in the King’s shoes, as the manager and promoter of the Church of England, and I knew that we must miss His Majesty (whose arms were above the Commandments), as the leader of our thoughts in church, and handsome upon a guinea; nevertheless I kept on thinking how his death would act on me.

And here I saw it, many ways.  In the first place, troubles must break out; and we had eight-and-twenty ricks; counting grain, and straw, and hay.  Moreover, mother was growing weak about riots, and shooting, and burning; and she gathered the bed-clothes around her ears every night, when her feet were tucked up; and prayed not to awake until morning.  In the next place, much rebellion (though we would not own it; in either sense of the verb, to “own”) was whispering, and plucking skirts, and making signs, among us.  And the terror of the Doones helped greatly; as a fruitful tree of lawlessness, and a good excuse for everybody.  And after this—­or rather before it, and first of all indeed (if I must state the true order)—­arose upon me the thought of Lorna, and how these things would affect her fate.