uch more than I ever got, though father had sent me
to the famous grammar school at Tiverton founded by Master Blundell. She
now showed me how to make some strange contrivances called snowshoes,
which men use in very cold countries. Having learnt how to glide about
in them, I set off to find Lorna.

By good fortune, when I got to Glen Doone, where the waterfall had
frozen into rough steps, easy to climb, the snow came on again, thick
enough to blind a man who had not spent his time among it as I had for
days and days. The weather drove all the Doones indoors, and I found
Lorna's house almost drifted up like our farm, but got at last to the
door and knocked. I was not sure but that the answer might not be the
mouth of a carbine; but Gwenny Carfax, a little Cornish maid attached to
my Lorna, opened it, and said when she saw me:

"Master Ridd! I wish you was good to eat. Us be shut in here and
starving."

The look of wolfish hunger in her eyes frightened me, and I strode in
and found Lorna fainting for want of food. Happily, I had a good loaf of
bread and a large mince pie, which I had brought in case I had to bide
out all night. When Lorna and her maid had eaten these, I heard the tale
of their sufferings. Sir Ensor Doone was dead, and Carver Doone was now
the leader; and he was trying to starve Lorna into agreeing to marry
him.

"If I warrant to bring you safe and sound to our farm, Lorna, will you
come with me?" I said.

"To be sure I will, dear," said my darling. "I must either starve or go
with you, John."

Our plans were soon made. I went home with the utmost speed, and got out
our light pony-sled and dragged it to the top of the waterfall near my
darling's bower. It was well I returned quickly. When I entered Lorna's
house I saw, by the moonlight flowing in, a sight which drove me beyond
sense. Lorna was crouching behind a chair in utter terror, and a drunken
Doone was trying to draw the chair away. I bore him out of the house as
lightly as I would a baby, but I squeezed his throat a little more than
I would an infant's; then I pitched him into a snow-drift, and he did
not move.

It was no time to linger. I ran with Lorna in my arms to the sled, and
Gwenny followed. Then, with my staff from rock to rock, I broke the
sled's too rapid way down the frozen waterfall, and brought my darling
safely out of Glen Doone by the selfsame path which first led me up to
her. In an hour's time she was under my roof, and my