For now as the winter passed, the Doones were not keeping themselves at home, as in honour they were bound to do. Twenty sheep a week, and one fat ox, and two stout red deer (for wholesome change of diet), as well as threescore bushels of flour, and two hogsheads and a half of cider, and a hundredweight of candles, not to mention other things of almost every variety which they got by insisting upon it--surely these might have sufficed to keep the people in their place, with no outburst of wantonness. Nevertheless, it was not so; they had made complaint about something--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 man's holiday,' as we call it.