It is needless to say that the real gentry for a long time treated my new honours with contempt and ridicule; but gradually as they found that I was not such a fool as to claim any equality with them, but went about my farm-work, and threw another man at wrestling, and touched my hat to the magistrates, just the same as ever; some gentlemen of the highest blood—­of which we think a great deal more than of gold, around our neighbourhood—­actually expressed a desire to make my acquaintance.  And when, in a manner quite straightforward, and wholly free from bitterness, I thanked them for this (which appeared to me the highest honour yet offered me), but declined to go into their company because it would make me uncomfortable, and themselves as well, in a different way, they did what nearly all Englishmen do, when a thing is right and sensible.  They shook hands with me; and said that they could not deny but that there was reason in my view of the matter.  And although they themselves must be the losers—­which was a handsome thing to say—­they would wait until I was a little older and more aware of my own value.

Now this reminds me how it is that an English gentleman is so far in front of foreign noblemen and princes.  I have seen at times, a little, both of one and of the other, and making more than due allowance for the difficulties of language, and the difference of training, upon the whole, the balance is in favour of our people.  And this, because we have two weights, solid and (even in scale of manners) outweighing all light complaisance; to wit, the inborn love of justice, and the power of abiding.

Yet some people may be surprised that men with any love of justice, whether inborn or otherwise, could continue to abide the arrogance, and rapacity, and tyranny of the Doones.

For now as the winter passed, the Doones were not keeping themselves at home, as in honour they were bound to do.  Twenty sheep a week, and one fat ox, and two stout red deer (for wholesome change of diet), as well as threescore bushels of flour, and two hogsheads and a half of cider, and a hundredweight of candles, not to mention other things of almost every variety which they got by insisting upon it—­surely these might have sufficed to keep the people in their place, with no outburst of wantonness.  Nevertheless, it was not so; they had made complaint about something—­too much ewe-mutton, I think it was—­and in spite of all the pledges given, they had ridden forth, and carried away two maidens of our neighbourhood.

Now these two maidens were known, because they had served the beer at an ale-house; and many men who had looked at them, over a pint or quart vessel (especially as they were comely girls), thought that it was very hard for them to go in that way, and perhaps themselves unwilling.  And their mother (although she had taken some money, which the Doones were always full of) declared that it was a robbery; and though it increased for a while the custom, that must soon fall off again.  And who would have her two girls now, clever as they were and good?