8o WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



was a sportsman, and accustomed to both rod and gun. 

 We had whipped the West Dart, growing narrower and 

 shallower every day, and then by common consent, meet- 

 ing no reward, one day spiked our rods, lay down on the 

 grass, and in the heart of Dartmoor smoked our pipes of peace 

 like a couple of lotos-eaters to whom there was no future. 



He knew the moors as the Londoner knows Fleet Street. 

 He had shot blackcock in certain bits of scrub where a few 

 regularly breed; he had tramped in the September days 

 over the Tor far away to the north-east, returning at night 

 with six or seven brace of snipe picked up in the bogs, and 

 an odd woodcock or two recruiting on Dartmoor before 

 starting for their inland haunts. He had ridden to hounds 

 when the fox made straight over the open, up and down 

 hills steep as the roof of a house. He showed me a cup- 

 board in the inn at Two Bridges, where after two days' 

 hard work on the upper moors he had deposited overnight 

 two dozen of snipe that were to be despatched as presents 

 to particular friends. In the morning, however, he was dis- 

 gusted at finding the hearts carefully and cleanly extracted, 

 probably by rats, from most of the birds, which were other- 

 wise untouched. 



Finally, after a true Devonshire luncheon of "bread and 

 cheese and cider," he took me to Wistman's Wood. From 

 the valley I had previously noticed what appeared to be a 

 rather extensive shrubbery to the north-west of Crockern 

 Tor. In the great heat it was a stiff climb up the slope, 

 over which immovable blocks of granite lay thickly pep- 

 pered. The shrubbery turned out to be a wonderful plan- 

 tation of dwarfed, gnarled, uncanny looking oak trees, 

 reputed to have been a veritable Druidical grove. The 



