CHAPTER XVI.
LORNA GROWING FORMIDABLE Having reconnoitred thus the position of the enemy, Master Huckaback, on the homeward road, cross-examined me in a manner not at all desirable.
For he had noted my confusion and eager gaze at something unseen by him in the valley, and thereupon he made up his mind to know everything about it.

In this, however, he partly failed; for although I was no hand at fence, and would not tell him a falsehood, I managed so to hold my peace that he put himself upon the wrong track, and continued thereon with many vaunts of his shrewdness and experience, and some chuckles at my simplicity.

Thus much however, he learned aright, that I had been in the Doone valley several years before, and might be brought upon strong inducement to venture there again.

But as to the mode of my getting in, the things I saw, and my thoughts upon them, he not only failed to learn the truth, but certified himself into an obstinacy of error, from which no after-knowledge was able to deliver him.

And this he did, not only because I happened to say very little, but forasmuch as he disbelieved half of the truth I told him, through his own too great sagacity.
Upon one point, however, he succeeded more easily than he expected, viz.