m;
and if I had only brought my gun, I would have tried to shoot him.

'Here our queen is! Here's the queen, here's the captain's daughter!'
he shouted to his comrades; 'fast asleep, by God, and hearty! Now I have
first claim to her; and no one else shall touch the child. Back to the
bottle, all of you!'

He set her dainty little form upon his great square shoulder, and her
narrow feet in one broad hand; and so in triumph marched away, with the
purple velvet of her skirt ruffling in his long black beard, and the
silken length of her hair fetched out, like a cloud by the wind behind
her. This way of her going vexed me so, that I leaped upright in the
water, and must have been spied by some of them, but for their haste to
the wine-bottle. Of their little queen they took small notice, being in
this urgency; although they had thought to find her drowned; but trooped
away after one another with kindly challenge to gambling, so far as I
could make them out; and I kept sharp watch, I assure you.

Going up that darkened glen, little Lorna, riding still the largest and
most fierce of them, turned and put up a hand to me, and I put up a hand
to her, in the thick of the mist and the willows.

She was gone, my little dear (though tall of her age and healthy); and
when I got over my thriftless fright, I longed to have more to say to
her. Her voice to me was so different from all I had ever heard before,
as might be a sweet silver bell intoned to the small chords of a harp.
But I had no time to think about this, if I hoped to have any supper.

I crept into a bush for warmth, and rubbed my shivering legs on
bark, and longed for mother's fagot. Then as daylight sank below the
forget-me-not of stars, with a sorrow to be quit, I knew that now must
be my time to get away, if there were any.

Therefore, wringing my sodden breaches, I managed to crawl from the bank
to the niche in the cliff which Lorna had shown me.

Through the dusk I had trouble to see the mouth, at even the five
land-yards of distance; nevertheless, I entered well, and held on by
some dead fern-stems, and did hope that no one would shoot me.

But while I was hugging myself like this, with a boyish manner of
reasoning, my joy was like to have ended in sad grief both to myself
and my mother, and haply to all honest folk who shall love to read
this history. For hearing a noise in front of me, and like a coward not
knowing where, but afraid to turn round or think of