ned. Leaping from my steed, I waited, and
bared my arms as if in the ring for wrestling. Then the boy ran towards
me, clasped my leg, and looked up at me.

"Ensie, dear," I said, "run and try to find a bunch of bluebells for the
pretty lady."

Presently Carver Doone gathered together his mighty limbs, and I closed
with him. He caught me round the waist with such a grip as had never
been laid upon me. I heard a rib go where the bullet had broken it. But
God was with me that day. I grasped Carver Doone's arm, and tore the
muscle out of it; then I had him by the throat, and I left him sinking,
joint by joint, into the black bog.

I returned to the farm in a dream, and only the thought of Lorna's
death, like a heavy knell, was tolling in the belfry of my brain. Into
the old farmhouse I tottered, like a weakling child, with mother helping
me along, yet fearing, except by stealth, to look at me.

"I have killed him," was all I said, "even as he killed Lorna."

"Lorna is still living, John," said my mother, very softly.

"Is there any chance for her?" I cried, awaking out of my dream. "For
me, I mean; for me?"

Well, my darling is sitting by me now as I write, and I am now Sir John
Ridd, if you please. Year by year, Lorna's beauty grows, with the growth
of goodness, kindness, and true happiness--above all, with loving. For
change, she makes a joke of this, and plays with it, and laughs at it.
Then, when my slow nature marvels, back she comes to the earnest thing.
If I wish to pay her out--as may happen once or twice, when we become
too galdsome--I bring her to sadness, and to me for the cure of it, by
the two words, "Lorna Doone."

* * * * *

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

The Decameron Or Ten Days' Entertainment

Giovanni Boccaccio, the father of Italian prose literature,
was born in 1313, probably at Certaldo, a small town about
twenty miles from Florence, where he was brought up. In 1341
he fell in love with the daughter of King Robert of Naples,
and the lady, whom he made famous under the name of Fiammetta,
seems to have loved him in return. It was for her amusement,
and for the amusement of the Queen of Naples, that he composed
many of the stories in "The Decameron." He returned to
Florence in 1350, after the great plague, which he has
described in so vivid a manner in the opening chapter of his
great work, had abated; and three