Before we had finished meditating upon this loose outrage—­for so I at least would call it, though people accustomed to the law may take a different view of it—­we had news of a thing far worse, which turned the hearts of our women sick.  This I will tell in most careful language, so as to give offence to none, if skill of words may help it.*

     * The following story is strictly true; and true it is that
     the country-people rose, to a man, at this dastard cruelty,
     and did what the Government failed to do.—­Ed. L.D.

Mistress Margery Badcock, a healthy and upright young woman, with a good rich colour, and one of the finest hen-roosts anywhere round our neighbourhood, was nursing her child about six of the clock, and looking out for her husband.  Now this child was too old to be nursed, as everybody told her; for he could run, say two yards alone, and perhaps four or five, by holding to handles.  And he had a way of looking round, and spreading his legs, and laughing, with his brave little body well fetched up, after a desperate journey to the end of the table, which his mother said nothing could equal.  Nevertheless, he would come to be nursed, as regular as a clock, almost; and, inasmuch as he was the first, both father and mother made much of him; for God only knew whether they could ever compass such another one.

Christopher Badcock was a tenant farmer, in the parish of Martinhoe, renting some fifty acres of land, with a right of common attached to them; and at this particular time, being now the month of February, and fine open weather, he was hard at work ploughing and preparing for spring corn.  Therefore his wife was not surprised although the dusk was falling, that farmer Christopher should be at work in “blind man’s holiday,” as we call it.

But she was surprised, nay astonished, when by the light of the kitchen fire (brightened up for her husband), she saw six or seven great armed men burst into the room upon her; and she screamed so that the maid in the back kitchen heard her, but was afraid to come to help.  Two of the strongest and fiercest men at once seized poor young Margery; and though she fought for her child and home, she was but an infant herself in their hands.  In spite of tears, and shrieks, and struggles, they tore the babe from the mother’s arms, and cast it on the lime ash floor; then they bore her away to their horses (for by this time she was senseless), and telling the others to sack the house, rode off with their prize to the valley.  And from the description of one of those two, who carried off the poor woman, I knew beyond all doubt that it was Carver Doone himself.

[Illustration:  652.jpg Siezed poor Margery]

The other Doones being left behind, and grieved perhaps in some respects, set to with a will to scour the house, and to bring away all that was good to eat.  And being a little vexed herein (for the Badcocks were not a rich couple) and finding no more than bacon, and eggs, and cheese, and little items, and nothing to drink but water; in a word, their taste being offended, they came back, to the kitchen, and stamped; and there was the baby lying.