Richard Doddridge Blackmore

“ I was ready at any moment to shoot at anybody, having great faith in my blunderbuss, but hoping not to prove it. And as I passed the narrow place where the Doones had killed my father, such a fear broke out upon me that I leaned upon the neck of Peggy, and shut my eyes, and was cold all over. However, there was not a soul to be seen, until we came home to the old farmyard, and there was my mother crying sadly, and Betty Muxworthy scolding.
"Come along, now," I whispered to Annie, the moment supper was over; "and if you can hold your tongue, Annie, I will show you something." ”

“ There was still some daylight here and there, as I rose the hill above Porlock, wondering whether my mother would be in a fright, or would not know it. The two great packages of powder, slung behind my back, knocked so hard against one another, that I feared they must either spill or blow up, and hurry me over Peggy's ears from the woollen cloth I rode upon. For father always liked a horse to have some wool upon his loins whenever he went far from home and had to stand about, where one pleased, hot, and wet, and panting. ”

“ For I hated to kiss or be kissed in those days; and so all honest boys must do, when God puts any strength in them. But now I wanted the powder so much, that I went and kissed mother very shyly, looking round the corner first, for Betty not to see me.
But mother gave me half-a-dozen, and only one shilling for all of them; and I could not find it in my heart to ask her for another, although I would have taken it. In very quick time I ran away with the shilling in my pocket, and got Peggy out on the Porlock road without my mother knowing it. ”