With the play of his wrist, he cracked three or four crowns, being always famous at single-stick; until the rest drew their horses away, and he thought that he was master, and would tell his wife about it.
But a man beyond the range of staff was crouching by the peat-stack, with a long gun set to his shoulder, and he got poor father against the sky, and I cannot tell the rest of it.

Only they knew that Smiler came home, with blood upon his withers, and father was found in the morning dead on the moor, with his ivy-twisted cudgel lying broken under him.
Now, whether this were an honest fight, God judge betwixt the Doones and me.
It was more of woe than wonder, being such days of violence, that mother knew herself a widow, and her children fatherless.

Of children there were only three, none of us fit to be useful yet, only to comfort mother, by making her to work for us.

I, John Ridd, was the eldest, and felt it a heavy thing on me; next came sister Annie, with about two years between us; and then the little Eliza.
Now, before I got home and found my sad loss--and no boy ever loved his father more than I loved mine--mother had done a most wondrous thing, which made all the neighbours say that she must be mad, at least.

Upon the Monday morning, while her husband lay unburied, she cast a white hood over her hair, and gathered a black cloak round her, and, taking counsel of no one, set off on foot for the Doone-gate.
In the early afternoon she came to the hollow and barren entrance, where in truth there was no gate, only darkness to go through.