“Darling, do just what you please.  Only make no rogue of me.”

For that she gave me the simplest, kindest, and sweetest of all kisses; and I went down the great stairs grandly, thinking of nothing else but that.

[Illustration:  631.jpg Old London Bridge]

CHAPTER LXVIII

JOHN IS JOHN NO LONGER

[Illustration:  632.jpg Illustrated Capital]

It would be hard for me to tell the state of mind in which I lived for a long time after this.  I put away from me all torment, and the thought of future cares, and the sight of difficulty; and to myself appeared, which means that I became the luckiest of lucky fellows, since the world itself began.  I thought not of the harvest even, nor of the men who would get their wages without having earned them, nor of my mother’s anxiety and worry about John Fry’s great fatness (which was growing upon him), and how she would cry fifty times in a day, “Ah, if our John would only come home, how different everything would look!”

Although there were no soldiers now quartered at Plover’s Barrows, all being busied in harassing the country, and hanging the people where the rebellion had thriven most, my mother, having received from me a message containing my place of abode, contrived to send me, by the pack-horses, as fine a maund as need be of provisions, and money, and other comforts.  Therein I found addressed to Colonel Jeremiah Stickles, in Lizzie’s best handwriting, half a side of the dried deer’s flesh, in which he rejoiced so greatly.  Also, for Lorna, a fine green goose, with a little salt towards the tail, and new-laid eggs inside it, as well as a bottle of brandied cherries, and seven, or it may have been eight pounds of fresh homemade butter.  Moreover, to myself there was a letter full of good advice, excellently well expressed, and would have been of the greatest value, if I had cared to read it.  But I read all about the farm affairs, and the man who had offered himself to our Betty for the five pounds in her stocking; as well as the antics of Sally Snowe, and how she had almost thrown herself at Parson Bowden’s head (old enough to be her grandfather), because on the Sunday after the hanging of a Countisbury man, he had preached a beautiful sermon about Christian love; which Lizzie, with her sharp eyes, found to be the work of good Bishop Ken.  Also I read that the Doones were quiet; the parishes round about having united to feed them well through the harvest time, so that after the day’s hard work, the farmers might go to bed at night.  And this plan had been found to answer well, and to save much trouble on both sides, so that everybody wondered it had not been done before.  But Lizzie thought that the Doones could hardly be expected much longer to put up with it, and probably would not have done so now, but for a little adversity; to wit, that the famous Colonel Kirke had, in the most outrageous