John Ridd, an urchin of twelve, engaged in a fight with Robin Snell at the ancient grammar school of Blundells at Tiverton, which was founded in 1604 by one Peter Blundell, and which flourishes to this day, one of the most famous of all the schools in the west of England. Thence, in company with John Fry, the boys journey to the town of Oare, to find that his father has met death at the hands of the Doones. In his treatment of this savage and bloodthirsty family, Mr. Blackmore strayed only occasionally from actual history,

near Glenthorne, that the people of the countryside dared to think of attacking them. Then, like wildfire, there spread over the moorlands the news that a child had been brutally slain at Exford, and its mother carried away. The doggerel of the novel :

Child, if they ask who killed thee,

Say 'twas the Doones of Bagworthy,

was actually sung by the butchers over the infant's body. Then the men of the moors gathered in arms, and with the

WERE DIM

although they seem to have settled in Exmoor somewhat later than would be supposed from reading the novel. The seventeenth century was drawing very near to its close when, under the leadership of a Doone who had in some way made himself obnoxious to the government of James the Second, the band established its mountain home and began a freebooting career, existing by the levying of blackmail and cattle lifting. It was not until a Doone trooper had been killed in a raid on Yeanworthy farm,

aid of the king's soldiers swept the Doones from the earth.

The Doone Valley and Bagworthy Water lie in what even at the present day is the most desolate part of Exmoor. Inland from Lynmouth, or Lynton, the road winds about the hills and through the valleys, becoming steadily wilder and rougher. Here and there may be seen a shepherd's hut, half hidden in a corner of the valley; but there are few other signs of habitation. All about nothing but grazing sheep and down rising above