his eyes quite
changed with the sparkles of his fury; "is this the way we are to deal
with such a low-bred clod as thou? To question the doings of our people,
and to talk of clergy! What, dream you not that we could have clergy,
and of the right sort, too, if only we cared to have them? Tush! Am I to
spend my time arguing with a plough-tail Bob?"

"If your worship will hearken to me," I answered very modestly, not
wishing to speak harshly, with Lorna looking up at me; "there are many
things that might be said without any kind of argument, which I would
never wish to try with one of your worship's learning. And in the first
place it seems to me that if our fathers hated one another bitterly, yet
neither won the victory, only mutual discomfiture; surely that is but
a reason why we should be wiser than they, and make it up in this
generation by goodwill and loving"--

"Oh, John, you wiser than your father!" mother broke upon me here; "not
but what you might be as wise, when you come to be old enough."

"Young people of the present age," said the Counsellor severely, "have
no right feeling of any sort, upon the simplest matter. Lorna Doone,
stand forth from contact with that heir of parricide; and state in your
own mellifluous voice, whether you regard this slaughter as a pleasant
trifle."

"You know, without any words of mine," she answered very softly, yet not
withdrawing from my hand, "that although I have been seasoned well to
every kind of outrage, among my gentle relatives, I have not yet so
purely lost all sense of right and wrong as to receive what you have
said, as lightly as you declared it. You think it a happy basis for our
future concord. I do not quite think that, my uncle; neither do I quite
believe that a word of it is true. In our happy valley, nine-tenths of
what is said is false; and you were always wont to argue that true
and false are but a blind turned upon a pivot. Without any failure of
respect for your character, good uncle, I decline politely to believe a
word of what you have told me. And even if it were proved to me, all I
can say is this, if my John will have me, I am his for ever."

This long speech was too much for her; she had overrated her strength
about it, and the sustenance of irony. So at last she fell into my arms,
which had long been waiting for her; and there she lay with no other
sound, except a gurgling in her throat.

"You old villain," cried my mother, shaking her fist at t