But I was not attending to him, being drawn away on a sudden by a sight which never struck the sharp eyes of our General.  For I had long ago descried that little opening in the cliff through which I made my exit, as before related, on the other side of the valley.  No bigger than a rabbit-hole it seemed from where we stood; and yet of all the scene before me, that (from my remembrance perhaps) had the most attraction.  Now gazing at it with full thought of all that it had cost me, I saw a little figure come, and pause, and pass into it.  Something very light and white, nimble, smooth, and elegant, gone almost before I knew that any one had been there.  And yet my heart came to my ribs, and all my blood was in my face, and pride within me fought with shame, and vanity with self-contempt; for though seven years were gone, and I from my boyhood come to manhood, and all must have forgotten me, and I had half-forgotten; at that moment, once for all, I felt that I was face to face with fate (however poor it might be), weal or woe, in Lorna Doone.

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CHAPTER XVI

LORNA GROWING FORMIDABLE

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Having reconnoitred thus the position of the enemy, Master Huckaback, on the homeward road, cross-examined me in a manner not at all desirable.  For he had noted my confusion and eager gaze at something unseen by him in the valley, and thereupon he made up his mind to know everything about it.  In this, however, he partly failed; for although I was no hand at fence, and would not tell him a falsehood, I managed so to hold my peace that he put himself upon the wrong track, and continued thereon with many vaunts of his shrewdness and experience, and some chuckles at my simplicity.  Thus much however, he learned aright, that I had been in the Doone valley several years before, and might be brought upon strong inducement to venture there again.  But as to the mode of my getting in, the things I saw, and my thoughts upon them, he not only failed to learn the truth, but certified himself into an obstinacy of error, from which no after-knowledge was able to deliver him.  And this he did, not only because I happened to say very little, but forasmuch as he disbelieved half of the truth I told him, through his own too great sagacity.

Upon one point, however, he succeeded more easily than he expected, viz. in making me promise to visit the place again, as soon as occasion offered, and to hold my own counsel about it.  But I could not help smiling at one thing, that according to his point of view my own counsel meant my own and Master Reuben Huckaback’s.