Whoever wrote such stories knew not how slippery a peeled wand is, even if one could hit it, and how it gives to the onset.

Now, let him stick one in the ground, and take his bow and arrow at it, ten yards away, or even five.
Now, after all this which I have written, and all the rest which a reader will see, being quicker of mind than I am (who leave more than half behind me, like a man sowing wheat, with his dinner laid in the ditch too near his dog), it is much but what you will understand the Doones far better than I did, or do even to this moment; and therefore none will doubt when I tell them that our good justiciaries feared to make an ado, or hold any public inquiry about my dear father's death.
They would all have had to ride home that night, and who could say what might betide them.

Least said soonest mended, because less chance of breaking.
So we buried him quietly--all except my mother, indeed, for she could not keep silence--in the sloping little churchyard of Oare, as meek a place as need be, with the Lynn brook down below it.

There is not much of company there for anybody's tombstone, because the parish spreads so far in woods and moors without dwelling-house.

If we bury one man in three years, or even a woman or child, we talk about it for three months, and say it must be our turn next, and scarcely grow accustomed to it until another goes.
Annie was not allowed to come, because she cried so terribly; but she ran to the window, and saw it all, mooing there like a little calf, so frightened and so left alone.