Foreland, and added them to
their number.

It was lucky that I came home so soon; for I found the house in a great
commotion, and all the women trembling. When I asked what the matter
was, Lorna, who seemed the most self-possessed, answered that it was all
her fault, for she alone had frightened them. And this in the following
manner. She had stolen out to the garden towards dusk, to watch some
favourite hyacinths just pushing up, like a baby's teeth, and just
attracting the fatal notice of a great house-snail at night-time. Lorna
at last had discovered the glutton, and was bearing him off in triumph
to the tribunal of the ducks, when she descried two glittering eyes
glaring at her steadfastly, from the elder-bush beyond the stream.
The elder was smoothing its wrinkled leaves, being at least two months
behind time; and among them this calm cruel face appeared; and she knew
it was the face of Carver Doone.

The maiden, although so used to terror (as she told me once before),
lost all presence of mind hereat, and could neither shriek nor fly, but
only gaze, as if bewitched. Then Carver Doone, with his deadly smile,
gloating upon her horror, lifted his long gun, and pointed full at
Lorna's heart. In vain she strove to turn away; fright had stricken her
stiff as stone. With the inborn love of life, she tried to cover the
vital part wherein the winged death must lodge--for she knew Carver's
certain aim--but her hands hung numbed, and heavy; in nothing but her
eyes was life.

With no sign of pity in his face, no quiver of relenting, but a
well-pleased grin at all the charming palsy of his victim, Carver Doone
lowered, inch by inch, the muzzle of his gun. When it pointed to the
ground, between her delicate arched insteps, he pulled the trigger,
and the bullet flung the mould all over her. It was a refinement of
bullying, for which I swore to God that night, upon my knees, in secret,
that I would smite down Carver Doone or else he should smite me down.
Base beast! what largest humanity, or what dreams of divinity, could
make a man put up with this?

My darling (the loveliest, and most harmless, in the world of maidens),
fell away on a bank of grass, and wept at her own cowardice; and
trembled, and wondered where I was; and what I would think of this. Good
God! What could I think of it? She over-rated my slow nature, to admit
the question.

While she leaned there, quite unable yet to save herself, Carver came
to the brink