



Produced by David Widger





SLAIN BY THE DOONES.

by R. D. Blackmore

Copyright: Dodd, Mead And Company, 1895




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. Nevert