bacon-curing, and when it was best to kill a pig, and how to treat the
maidens. Not that I would ever wish--oh, John, it seems so strange to
me, and last week you were everything.'

Here mother burst out crying again, not loudly, but turning quietly,
because she knew that no one now would ever care to wipe the tears. And
fifty or a hundred things, of weekly and daily happening, came across my
mother, so that her spirit fell like slackening lime.

'This matter must be seen to; it shall be seen to at once,' the old man
answered, moved a little in spite of all his knowledge. 'Madam, if any
wrong has been done, trust the honour of a Doone; I will redress it to
my utmost. Come inside and rest yourself, while I ask about it. What was
your good husband's name, and when and where fell this mishap?'

'Deary me,' said mother, as he set a chair for her very polite, but she
would not sit upon it; 'Saturday morning I was a wife, sir; and Saturday
night I was a widow, and my children fatherless. My husband's name was
John Ridd, sir, as everybody knows; and there was not a finer or better
man in Somerset or Devon. He was coming home from Porlock market, and a
new gown for me on the crupper, and a shell to put my hair up--oh, John,
how good you were to me!'

Of that she began to think again, and not to believe her sorrow, except
as a dream from the evil one, because it was too bad upon her, and
perhaps she would awake in a minute, and her husband would have the
laugh of her. And so she wiped her eyes and smiled, and looked for
something.

'Madam, this is a serious thing,' Sir Ensor Doone said graciously, and