He read it stumblingly and haltingly; as his teacher had foreseen, many of the words were quite beyond him; but it was written in English so pure, so clear, so simple, that little of importance escaped him. And what a world of enchantment it opened to him!—the wide moorlands of Exmoor, the narrow Doone valley, the water-slide, the great London road. And what people, too!—the lawless Doones, Captain, Counselor, Carver, who, for all their villainy, had something attractive about them, Lorna, and great John Ridd. Of course he did not see the full beauty of the book, but its magic he caught some glimpses of, and it bore him quite away from the eventless valley of New River to that other valley where the Doones reigned in all their insolence and pride, and kept Lorna prisoner to be a bride to Carver.
Hunger warned him of the dinner-hour, but he begrudged the time it took to go down to the house, swallow his food, and get back again to his place on the hillside. The afternoon passed almost before he knew it, and the lengthening shadows warned him that evening was at hand. Still he read on, glancing up only now and then to mark how the light was fading, and when it failed altogether it left John just in the midst of his adventures in London. Tommy lay for a long time looking down the valley and thinking over what he had read, and at last, with a sigh, picked up the book and started homeward.
What need to detail further? All summer long he walked in a land of enchantment, whether with John Ridd on Exmoor, with David Copperfield in London, with Richard Lion-heart in Sherwood Forest, or with Henry Esmond at Castlewood. As he went onward he grew stronger in his reading, and so found the way less difficult, and at last acquired such proficiency that he would read portions of his books aloud to his wondering parents and to Johnny.
Mr. Bayliss found them sitting so one Sunday afternoon, and paused at the porch to listen. Tommy was reading of that last desperate struggle between John Ridd and Carver Doone:
“The black bog had him by the feet; the sucking of the ground drew on him like the thirsty lips of death. In our fury, we had heeded neither wet nor dry, nor thought of earth beneath us. I myself might scarcely leap, with the last spring of o’erlabored legs, from the engulfing grave of slime. He fell back with his swarthy breast (from which my gripe had rent all clothing) like a hummock of bog-oak standing out the quagmire; and then he tossed his arms to heaven, and they were black to the elbow, and the glare of his eyes was ghastly. I could only gaze and pant, for my strength was no more than an infant’s, from the fury and the horror. Scarcely could I turn away, while, joint by joint, he sank from sight.”
For an instant there was silence. Then, with a sigh, Tommy’s father relaxed his attitude of strained attention and dropped back in his chair.
“Jee-rusalem!” he said at last. “Ter think of it! Th’ bog swallered him up. Good fer him! He ort t’ got worse ’n thet fer killin’ Lorna.”
Tommy smiled to himself, in his superior knowledge.
“That ain’t all,” he said. “There’s another chapter.”
“Another chapter!” cried his father. “Maybe Lorna ain’t dead, then. It’ll tell about her funeral, anyway. Go on, Tommy.”