we are here, how can we help being as the Lord has made
us? The sin, as it seems to me, would be to feel or fancy ourselves
case-hardened against the will of our Maker, which so often is--that we
should grieve. Without a thought how that might be, I did the natural
thing, and cried about the death of my dear father until I was like to
follow him. But a strange thing happened in a month or so of time, which
according to Deborah saved my life, by compelling other thoughts to
come. My father had been buried in a small churchyard, with nobody
living near it, and the church itself was falling down, through scarcity
of money on the moor. The Warren, as our wood was called, lay somewhere
in the parish of Brendon, a straggling country, with a little village
somewhere, and a blacksmith's shop and an ale house, but no church that
anyone knew of, till you came to a place called Cheriton. And there
was a little church all by itself, not easy to find, though it had four
bells, which nobody dared to ring, for fear of his head and the burden
above it. But a boy would go up the first Sunday of each month, and
strike the liveliest of them with a poker from the smithy. And then a
brave parson, who feared nothing but his duty, would make his way in,
with a small flock at his heels, and read the Psalms of the day, and
preach concerning the difficulty of doing better. And it was accounted
to the credit of the Doones that they never came near him, for he had no
money.

The Fords had been excellent Catholics always; but Thomas and Deborah
Pring, who managed everything while I was overcome, said that the
church, being now so old, must have belonged to us, and therefor might
be considered holy. The parson also said that it would do, for he was
not a man of hot persuasions. And so my dear father lay there, without a
stone, or a word to tell who he was, and the grass began to grow.

Here I was sitting one afternoon in May, and the earth was beginning
to look lively; when a shadow from the west fell over me, and a large,
broad man stood behind it. If I had been at all like myself, a thing
of that kind would have frightened me; but now the strings of my system
seemed to have nothing like a jerk in them, for I cared not whither I
went, nor how I looked, nor whether I went anywhere.

"Child! poor child!" It was a deep, soft voice of distant yet large
benevolence. "Almost a woman, and a comely one, for those who think of
such matters. Such a child I