me; for if anybody-had cried shame and death upon
that wicked horde, it was Deborah Pring, who was talking to me thus! I
looked at her with wonder, suspecting for the moment that the venerable
Councillor--who was clever enough to make a cow forget her calf--might
have paid her a visit while I was away. But very soon the reason of the
change appeared.

"Who hath taken command of the attack?" she asked, as if no one would
believe the answer; "not Captain Purvis, as ought to have been, nor even
Captain Dallas of Devon, but Spy Stickles by royal warrant, the man that
hath been up to Oare so long! And my son Robert, who hath come down to
help to train them, and understandeth cannon guns----"

"Captain Purvis? I seem to know that name very well. I have often heard
it from my father. And your son under him! Why, Deborah, what are you
hiding from me?"

Now good Mrs. Pring was beginning to forget, or rather had never borne
properly in mind, that I was the head of the household now, and entitled
to know everything, and to be asked about it. But people who desire to
have this done should insist upon it at the outset, which I had not been
in proper state to do. So that she made quite a grievance of it, when I
would not be treated as a helpless child. However, I soon put a stop to
that, and discovered to my surprise much more than could be imagined.

And before I could say even half of what I thought, a great noise arose
in the hollow of the hills, and came along the valleys, like the blowing
of a wind that had picked up the roaring of mankind upon its way.
Perhaps greater noise had never arisen upon the moor; and the cattle,
and the quiet sheep, and even the wild deer came bounding from
unsheltered places into any offering of branches, or of other heling
from the turbulence of men. And then a gray fog rolled down the valley,
and Deborah said it was cannon-smoke, following the river course; but to
me it seemed only the usual thickness of the air, when the clouds hang
low. Thomas Pring was gone, as behooved an ancient warrior, to see how
his successors did things, and the boy Dick Hutchings had begged leave
to sit in a tree and watch the smoke. Deborah and I were left alone, and
a long and anxious day we had.

At last the wood-pigeons had stopped their cooing,--which they kept up
for hours, when the weather matched the light,--and there was not a tree
that could tell its own shadow, and we were contented with the gentle
sounds t