[Lorna Doone<br> A Romance of Exmoor by R. D. Blackmore]@TWC D-Link book
Lorna Doone
A Romance of Exmoor

CHAPTER III
15/21

My little legs began to tremble to and fro upon Peggy's sides, as I heard the dead robber in chains behind us, and thought of the live ones still in front.
'But, John,' I whispered warily, sidling close to his saddle-bow; 'dear John, you don't think they will see us in such a fog as this ?' 'Never God made vog as could stop their eyesen,' he whispered in answer, fearfully; 'here us be by the hollow ground.

Zober, lad, goo zober now, if thee wish to see thy moother.' For I was inclined, in the manner of boys, to make a run of the danger, and cross the Doone-track at full speed; to rush for it, and be done with it.

But even then I wondered why he talked of my mother so, and said not a word of father.
We were come to a long deep 'goyal,' as they call it on Exmoor, a word whose fountain and origin I have nothing to do with.

Only I know that when little boys laughed at me at Tiverton, for talking about a 'goyal,' a big boy clouted them on the head, and said that it was in Homer, and meant the hollow of the hand.

And another time a Welshman told me that it must be something like the thing they call a 'pant' in those parts.
Still I know what it means well enough--to wit, a long trough among wild hills, falling towards the plain country, rounded at the bottom, perhaps, and stiff, more than steep, at the sides of it.


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