waterproof), "the weather is looking better,
and it's almost as far back as forward." The
lieutenant locked at his own exquisite boots
inquiringly, and then began to whistle.

"That is Badgerley yonder, if you could
see it," said Thompson, after a long pause;
"have you ever heard of the Doones of
Badgerley?"

I thought I was in for some anecdotes of
the aristocracy; but I was dry, and tolerably
good-humoured, and I returned for answer,
that I had not, and that I felt much interest
in the Doones of Badgerley.

"I can tell you all about the Doones of
Yorkshire," said the lieutenant sulkily, "if
that's anything to do with it. Doone was
sheriff, and kept the hounds, and I've been
at his place many times. He had a brother
somewhere in the south."

"Ah, but he didn't commit murder and
eat human flesh habitually, as these Doones
of Badgerley did—did he?" urged Thompson.

"I dare say. They were a queer lot, I
believe," said Shinar, grimly.

"Bless my soul!" cried I, it's raining
very hard; don't you think we had better go
back?"

"Don't be afraid, my dear fellow," said
Thompson, laughing; "poor Doone was
hung in chains on yon hillock, just seventy
years ago. He had made an excursion with
some members of his family to a desolate
farm near Barnstaple, when nobody was
at that time at home but an infant and
a maidservant in charge of it; the latter,
seeing the Doones ride up, and being
aware, although she did not know them,
that she had nothing to offer people of
their quality, left the child in the cradle, and
got into the oven out of their way. The
visitors then roamed over the establishment,
selecting such things as they had occasion
for, and afterwards sat down in the kitchen
to the baby and onions. Mr. D., however,
with a poetic spirit that did him honour at the
moment, but which afterwards caused him
to be hung in chains, chose to deliver himself
of the following distich, which he addressed
extemporaneously to the food in question;

    'Child, if they asks thee who eat thee,
     Say thou 'twas Doones of Badgerley.'

"The girl in the oven, who had a talent
for remembering verses, bore these words
carefully in her mind, and after the
departure of the Doones to their private
residence yonder, she gave such information to
the local constabulary that the result was
the violent extinction of the whole family,
without even an appeal to the Sir George
Grey of the period."

"How was it the girl was not done brown
in the oven?" asked the lieutenant
tenaciously.

"It was on a Sunday," answered Thompson,
with calm triumph, "and the farmer was
very properly accustomed to confine the
household to cold meat upon that day."

We had now got upon the great waste of
Exmoor, which is interspersed with
dangerous peat bogs and morasses, and extends
about ten miles every way, with scarcely a
fence or a tree. The rain drove up between
the low hills in dense masses, but descended
less thickly upon the higher parts of the road,
from which we could see a good way round.
On our left lay the little sluggish stream, not
yard across, which from this desolate birth-
place flows down, through a land of plenty,
of park and meadow, of orchard and cornfield,
by the old cathedral city to the southern
shore. Our attention was drawn to it on a
sudden by Kidd Shinar.

"My precious jingo!"—that was the
lieutenant's expression—"if they ain't red
deer!"

Red deer they were, bounding one after
the other over the infant Exe without
any effort, and then pacing grandly on into
the mist: the highest antlered of them,
the stag of stags, leading by a few paces the
royal herd. These red deer of Exmoor are
among the few still left in England except
in parks. They are hunted by a peculiar
breed of dogs, fuller of tone and deeper
of tongue than common, and, as some of the
north country sportsmen observe, by a peculiar
breed of men. The truth is, several
matters have to be observed in the pursuit of
deer, which are unknown to men accustomed
only to follow smaller game; and those who
don't regard such particulars must expect
to be stigmatised sometimes as a pack of
foolish fox-hunters. The fox-hunters we
know, in their own country, take it out, in
their turn, upon the hare-hunters, who are
sometimes addressed as thistle-whippers. This
finding the deer for ourselves, or at least going
to look for it after it has been marked down,
seems a far nobler method than that of turning
the astonished animal out of the back
door of an omnibus; and the death he
sometimes dies here, at bay in the dark Devon
stream, or leaping in mad career down some
red precipice sheer on to the sea-shore, seems
fine and fitting. I happened to remark
something like this to the lieutenant, whereupon
he mounted his deer hobby, holding on
principally by the antlers, upon the different
stages and varieties of which he dilated, in
the pouring rain, until I was almost ready
to drop. As a botanist is the last person
whom I would ask to sympathise with me
upon the delights of floriculture, so I am
well purposed never again to put a sportsman
upon the scent of his favourite game.

We came continually upon great
quantities of fine oxen looking quite oily
in the rain, and among large droves of
Exmoor ponies, beautiful-eyed and
eloquent featured, but unkempt and shaggy
enough, and seeming piteously thin by reason
of their long coats having got wet through,