When I returned to myself, the sun was just looking over a wooded cliff, and Anthony, holding a horn of water, and with water on his cheeks, was regarding me.
“Did you leave that brave man to be shot?” I asked, as if that were all my gratitude.
“I am not so bad as that,” he answered, without any anger, for he saw that I was not in reason yet. “At sight of my men, although we were but five in all, the robbers fled, thinking the regiment was there; but it is God’s truth that I thought little of anyone’s peril compared with thine. But there need be no fear for John Ridd; the Doones are mighty afraid of him since he cast their culverin through their door.”
“Was that the John Ridd I have heard so much of? Surely I might have known it, but my wits were shaken out of me.”
“Yes, that was the mighty man of Exmoor, to whom thou owest more than life.”
In horror of what I had so narrowly escaped, I fell upon my knees and thanked the Lord, and then I went shyly to the captain’s side and said: “I am ashamed to look at thee. Without Anthony Purvis, where should I be? Speak of no John Ridd to me.”
For this man whom I had cast forth, with coldness, as he must have thought—although I knew better, when he was gone—this man (my honoured husband now, who hath restored me to my father’s place, when kings had no gratitude or justice), Sir Anthony Purvis, as now he is, had dwelled in a hovel and lived on scraps, to guard the forsaken orphan, who had won, and shall ever retain, his love.