only a child with its reason gone.*

*This vile deed was done, beyond all doubt.

This affair made prudent people find more reason to let them alone than
to meddle with them; and now they had so entrenched themselves, and
waxed so strong in number, that nothing less than a troop of soldiers
could wisely enter their premises; and even so it might turn out ill, as
perchance we shall see by-and-by.

For not to mention the strength of the place, which I shall describe in
its proper order when I come to visit it, there was not one among them
but was a mighty man, straight and tall, and wide, and fit to lift four
hundredweight. If son or grandson of old Doone, or one of the northern
retainers, failed at the age of twenty, while standing on his naked feet
to touch with his forehead the lintel of Sir Ensor's door, and to fill
the door frame with his shoulders from sidepost even to sidepost, he was
led away to the narrow pass which made their valley so desperate, and
thrust from the crown with ignominy, to get his own living honestly.
Now, the measure of that doorway is, or rather was, I ought to say,
six feet and one inch lengthwise, and two feet all but two inches taken
crossways in the clear. Yet I not only have heard but know, being so
closely mixed with them, that no descendant of old Sir Ensor, neither
relative of his (except, indeed, the Counsellor, who was kept by them
for his wisdom), and no more than two of their following ever failed of
that test, and relapsed to the difficult ways of honesty.

Not that I think anything great of a standard the like of that: for
if they had set me in that door-frame at the age of twenty, it is like
enough that I should have walked away with it on my shoulders, though