DEVON AND SOMERSET. 99 



three o'clock. Time, two hours and ten minutes, 

 and the distance over twenty miles. He was a 

 good-bodied, seven-year-old deer, with a head 

 rather on the decline. He carried three upon 

 top on one side, with brow and tray, and on 

 the other, a straight horn on top with two tiny 

 offers, and his rights complete below. 



The middle of September is a time at which 

 one may expect good runs to commence. Rain 

 has generally fallen by that time, harvest opera- 

 tions and a month's hunting have set the deer 

 in motion after their summer's rest, and they 

 are in the best of condition. 



On Tuesday, the fifteenth of September, 

 1 89 1, the hounds having returned on the 

 previous Saturday to Exford from their annual 

 week's staghunting on the Quantocks, the meet 

 that morning was at a little wayside public- 

 house on the Filleigh and Martinhoe Road 

 known as the Friendship Inn. Within a mile 

 on the Barnstaple side — and that town is not 

 many miles awav — lie the coverts of Bratton 

 Fleming, Tithecome, Twitchen Wood, and so 

 forth, which have several times of late years 

 produced deer that have shown splendid gallops 

 over the forest, but these were not to be called 

 upon to-day. Miles had been harbouring as 

 usual, but his report was unfavourable, nothing 

 warrantable was at home, only a hind and some 

 male deer ; the stag that was supposed to be 



