hing--too much ewe-mutton, I think it was--and in spite of all the
pledges given, they had ridden forth, and carried away two maidens of
our neighbourhood.

Now these two maidens were known, because they had served the beer at
an ale-house; and many men who had looked at them, over a pint or quart
vessel (especially as they were comely girls), thought that it was very
hard for them to go in that way, and perhaps themselves unwilling. And
their mother (although she had taken some money, which the Doones were
always full of) declared that it was a robbery; and though it increased
for a while the custom, that must soon fall off again. And who would
have her two girls now, clever as they were and good?

Before we had finished meditating upon this loose outrage--for so I
at least would call it, though people accustomed to the law may take a
different view of it--we had news of a thing far worse, which turned the
hearts of our women sick. This I will tell in most careful language, so
as to give offence to none, if skill of words may help it. *

*The following story is strictly true; and true it is that
the country-people rose, to a man, at this dastard cruelty,
and did what the Government failed to do.--Ed.

Mistress Margery Badcock, a healthy and upright young woman, with a
good rich colour, and one of the finest hen-roosts anywhere round our
neighbourhood, was nursing her child about six of the clock, and
looking out for her husband. Now this child was too old to be nursed, as
everybody told her; for he could run, say two yards alone, and perhaps
four or five, by holding to handles. And he had a way of looking round,
and spreading his legs, and laughing, with his brave little body well
fetched up, after a desperate journey to the end of the table, which
his mother said nothing could equal. Nevertheless, he would come to
be nursed, as regular as a clock, almost; and, inasmuch as he was
the first, both father and mother made much of him; for God only knew
whether they could ever compass such another one.

Christopher Badcock was a tenant farmer, in the parish of Martinhoe,
renting some fifty acres of land, with a right of common attached to
them; and at this particular time, being now the month of February,
and fine open weather, he was hard at work ploughing and preparing for
spring corn. Therefore his wife was not surprised although the dusk
was falling, that farmer Christopher should be at work in 'blind