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  TALES FROM
  THE TELLING-HOUSE




[Illustration:

  TALES FROM THE
  TELLING-HOUSE


  BY

  R. D. BLACKMORE
  AUTHOR OF “LORNA DOONE,” ETC.


  1. SLAIN BY THE DOONES
  2. FRIDA; OR, THE LOVER’S LEAP
  3. GEORGE BOWRING
  4. CROCKER’S HOLE


  LONDON

  SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY
  LIMITED
  St. Dunstan’s House
  1896
]




PREFACE.


Sometimes of a night, when the spirit of a dream flits away for a waltz
with the shadow of a pen, over dreary moors and dark waters, I behold
an old man, with a keen profile, under a parson’s shovel hat, riding
a tall chestnut horse up the western <DW72> of Exmoor, followed by his
little grandson upon a shaggy and stuggy pony.

In the hazy folds of lower hills, some four or five miles behind them,
may be seen the ancient Parsonage, where the lawn is a russet sponge of
moss, and a stream tinkles under the dining-room floor, and the pious
rook, poised on the pulpit of his nest, reads a hoarse sermon to the
chimney-pots below. There is the home not of rooks alone, and parson,
and dogs that are scouring the moor; but also of the patches of hurry
we can see, and the bevies of bleating haste, converging by force of
men and dogs towards the final _rendezvous_, the autumnal muster of the
clans of wool.

For now the shrill piping of the northwest wind, and the browning
of furze and heather, and a scollop of snow upon Oare-oak Hill,
announce that the roving of soft green height, and the browsing of
sunny hollow, must be changed for the durance of hurdled quads, and
the monotonous munch of turnips. The joy of a scurry from the shadow
of a cloud, the glory of a rally with a hundred heads in line, the
pleasure of polishing a coign of rock, the bliss of beholding flat
nose, brown eyes, and fringy forehead, approaching round a corner for
a sheepish talk, these and every other jollity of freedom--what is
now become of them? Gone! Like a midsummer dream, or the vision of a
blue sky, pastured--to match the green hill--with white forms floating
peacefully; a sky, where no dog can be, much less a man, only the
fleeces of the gentle flock of heaven. Lackadaisy, and well-a-day! How
many of you will be woolly ghosts like them, before you are two months
older!

My grandfather knows what fine mutton is, though his grandson indites
of it by memory alone. “Ha, ha!” shouts the happier age, amid the
bleating turmoil, the yelping of dogs, and the sprawling of shepherds;
“John Fry, put your eye on that wether, the one with his J. B. upside
down, we’ll have a cut out of him on Sunday week, please God. Why, you
stupid fellow, you don’t even know a B yet! That is Farmer Passmore’s
mark you have got hold of. Two stomachs to a B; will you never
understand? Just look at what you’re doing! Here come James Bowden’s
and he has got a lot of ours! _Shep_ is getting stupid, and deaf as a
post. _Watch_ is worth ten of him. Good dog, good dog! You won’t let
your master be cheated. How many of ours, John Fry? Quick now! You can
tell, if you can’t read; and I can read quicker than I can tell.”

“Dree score, and vower Maister; ‘cardin’ to my rackonin’. Dree score
and zax it waz as us toorned out, zeventh of June, God knows it waz.
Wan us killed, long of harvest-taime; and wan tummled into bog-hole,
across yanner to Mole’s Chimmers.”

“But,” says the little chap on the shaggy pony, “John Fry, where are
the four that ought to have R. D. B. on them? You promised me, on the
blade of your knife, before I went to school again, that my two lambs
should have their children marked the same as they were.”

John turns redder than his own sheep’s-redding. He knows that he has
been caught out in a thumping lie, and although that happens to him
almost every day, his conscience has a pure complexion still. “’Twaz
along of the rains as wasshed ’un out.” In vain has he scratched his
head for a finer lie.

“Grandfather, you know that I had two lambs, and you let me put
R. D. B. on them with both my hands, after the shearing-time last year,
and I got six shillings for their wool the next time, and I gave it to
a boy who thrashed a boy that bullied me. And Aunt Mary Anne wrote to
tell me at school that my two lambs had increased two each, all of them
sheep; and there was sure to be a lot of money soon for me. And so I
went and promised it right and left, and how can I go back to school,
and be called a liar? You call this the _Telling-house_, because
people come here to tell their own sheep from their neighbours’, when
they fetch them home again. But I should say it was because they tell
such stories here. And if that is the reason, I know who can tell the
biggest ones.”

With the pride of a conscious author, he blushes, that rogue of a John
Fry blushes, wherever he has shaved within the last three weeks of his
false life.

“Never mind, my boy; story-telling never answers in the end,” says my
Grandfather--oh how could he thus foresee my fate? “Be sure you always
speak the truth.”

That advice have I followed always. And if I lost my four sheep then,
through the plagiarism of that bad fellow, by hook or crook I have
fetched four more out of the wilderness of the past; and I only wish
they were better mutton, for the pleasure of old friends who like a
simple English joint.

            R.D.B.

  _Old Christmas Day, 1896_




CONTENTS.


                                   PAGE

  SLAIN BY THE DOONES:

        I. AFTER A STORMY LIFE,       1

       II. BY A QUIET RIVER,         12

      III. WISE COUNSEL,             22

       IV. A COTTAGE HOSPITAL,       33

        V. MISTAKEN AIMS,            43

       VI. OVER THE BRIDGE,          55

  FRIDA; OR, THE LOVER’S LEAP,       69

  GEORGE BOWRING,                   135

  CROCKER’S HOLE,                   203




SLAIN BY THE DOONES.




CHAPTER I.

AFTER A STORMY LIFE.


To hear people talking about North Devon, and the savage part called
Exmoor, you might almost think that there never was any place in the
world so beautiful, or any living men so wonderful. It is not my
intention to make little of them, for they would be the last to permit
it; neither do I feel ill will against them for the pangs they allowed
me to suffer; for I dare say they could not help themselves, being
so slow-blooded, and hard to stir even by their own egrimonies. But
when I look back upon the things that happened, and were for a full
generation of mankind accepted as the will of God, I say, that the
people who endured them must have been born to be ruled by the devil.
And in thinking thus I am not alone; for the very best judges of that
day stopped short of that end of the world, because the law would not
go any further. Nevertheless, every word is true of what I am going
to tell, and the stoutest writer of history cannot make less of it by
denial.

My father was Sylvester Ford of Quantock, in the county of Somerset,
a gentleman of large estate as well as ancient lineage. Also of high
courage and resolution not to be beaten, as he proved in his many
rides with Prince Rupert, and woe that I should say it! in his most
sad death. To this he was not looking forward much, though turned of
threescore years and five; and his only child and loving daughter,
Sylvia, which is myself, had never dreamed of losing him. For he
was exceeding fond of me, little as I deserved it, except by loving
him with all my heart and thinking nobody like him. And he without
anything to go upon, except that he was my father, held, as I have
often heard, as good an opinion of me.

Upon the triumph of that hard fanatic, the Brewer, who came to a
timely end by the justice of high Heaven--my father, being disgusted
with England as well as banished from her, and despoiled of all his
property, took service on the Continent, and wandered there for many
years, until the replacement of the throne. Thereupon he expected, as
many others did, to get his estates restored to him, and perhaps to be
held in high esteem at court, as he had a right to be. But this did
not so come to pass. Excellent words were granted him, and promise of
tenfold restitution; on the faith of which he returned to Paris, and
married a young Italian lady of good birth and high qualities, but with
nothing more to come to her. Then, to his great disappointment, he
found himself left to live upon air--which, however distinguished, is
not sufficient--and love, which, being fed so easily, expects all who
lodge with it to live upon itself.

My father was full of strong loyalty; and the king (in his value of
that sentiment) showed faith that it would support him. His majesty
took both my father’s hands, having learned that hearty style in
France, and welcomed him with most gracious warmth, and promised him
more than he could desire. But time went on, and the bright words
f