The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-05-12

and a forgotten IninR next week. 1ue literary style Is rather affected in Its simplicity than natural; the story, while full of incident is in many ways inartistic, and there is a tendency to verbosty which to many readers prove wearisome. But the novel Is the story of an Eng fish yeoman, written by a. man With the blood and spirit of the English yeo- man strong in him.
 Blackmore has caught, as no other writer ever has the true soul of the class from which so many millions of Amer jeans are descended. It is this that gives one element of lasting value to Lorna Doone."
 IN the time of Charles IT. band of
 outlaws, known to the country round x about as the Doones, occupied a practically inaccessible valley on the bor- ders of Devon and Somerset.
 Their stronghold was known as Glen Doone. The rocks and cliffs pitched sheer up from it, forbidding approach save by one opening at one end of the glen, known as the Doone gate. It was an archway in the huge cliffs and was always pa- trolled by Doone sentinel and defended by a cannon.
 A little river ran through the glen and a break in the cliffs at the lower end let 1t out oyer a long, smoth stone slide, down whieh it sluiced with frightening ve- locity This passage, being deemed quite impossible for human beings to ascend, was never guarded. Indeed, as matter of fact, it would have been safe for the Doones to leave their whole glen un- guarded, for the simple peasantry and yeomanry of the district feared them with an abjectly humble fear and ac- cepted their presence and their outrages as dispensations to be endured submls- sively for the Doones were great folk.
 Many years before theF had come down from Scotland, when their great estates there had been confscated. and settled down as the scourge of the Exmoor coun- try. They were of the great race of the Lords of Lorne-all naughty as Lucifer and as wicked; handsome and tall men, strong, and knowing neither fear nor mercy So they levied tribute right and left robbed and murdered and carried off women, with but little opposition.
 Old Sir Ensor ruled the Doones. His son. himself along in years, and known as the counsellor, the only one in all that wicked glen who was not tall and straight. But he made up for his physi- cal defects in cunning, and his superior wit devised all the stratagems and trick cry of Glen Doone.
 No family in the neighborhood was safe from them. They even murdered John Ridd, the owner of the largest farm in all that country and one of the most prominent yeomen of the time. There was none to take up the quarrel of the Ridds. for the family consisted of Mrs. Ridd two daughters and a son, who was only I2 years old at the time.
 When young John Ridd was IA years old he went fishing one day in the Bag worthy river, and at last came to the place where the waters slid down from Glen Doone. Lured by boyish curiosity, he climbed up the sliding water at the risk of his life and fell exhausted on the turf.
 When he came to himself he looked up to see the sweetest creature he had ever looked upon gazing down on him and bathing his forehead with her handker- chief. They became acquainted with that direct frankness and that asking of many personal questions peculiar to children; and when there came shouting of men LID the valley, and the little girl showed John out of the glen by a secret way, he left his boy-heart behind him and took away her girl-heart by way of exchange.
 She was Lorna Doone, a girl whom Sir Ensor claimed as his granddaughter, and whom the Doones were bringing up i'm their wild village as their queen"
 Now. John Ridd, as the years passed, waxed nightly in strength and stature. and settled down to his farming, making his estate of Plover's Barrows the most profitable In all that region. He became hercuIean in frame, and was famous far and wide as the best wrestler in two shires.
 But all the time he thought of Lorna, and one day when he had come to twenty years he climbed up the waterfall again into Glen Doone and saw her walking by the riverside She knew him at once, and they talked long, but with more reserve now than when they were children.
 Lorna told him what he well knew, that every visit he made to the glen was at the peril of his life, for the Doones would surely murder him if they found him there. Before they parted she made the stout yeoman promise that he would come to her only when he saw from the top of the cliffs her mantle thrown over a certain rock in the valley. That was to be a signal that the coast was clear and he might venture with little more of safety.
 Because of the watchfulness of the Doones John could visit the valley but seldom, and he chafed under this fiercely, all the more that Lorna had warned him against Carver Doone, the giant Doone whom old Sir Ensor was pressing her to marry
 Things were in this condition when Mas ter Huckaback. Johns uncle, the richest man in Dulverton, was robbed by the Doones while on his way to visit Flowers Barrows. Master Huckaback could not move the local justices to action, but. being rich he made his woes known even in London. where, by money, he got the ear of Judge Jeffreys and told him many things about the state of the western shires. So it happened that a King s