of gardening and the pleasures of literature; cultivating his vines, peaches, nectarines, pears, and strawberries, and writing, first, sensational stories, and then historical romances.  In 1869, with his third attempt in fiction, “Lorna Doone:  A Romance of Exmoor,” he suddenly became famous as a novelist, and acted as the pioneer of the new romantic movement in fiction which R. L. Stevenson and other brilliant writers afterwards carried on.  Lorna Doone is the most famous of his heroines, but in “Cradock Nowell,” a fine tale of the New Forest, in “Alice Lorraine,” a story of the South Downs, and in “The Maid of Sker,” he has depicted womanly types equal in charm to Lorna.  He died at Teddington on January 20, 1900.

I.—­An Adventure in Glen Doone

Two miles below our farm at Oare, the Bagworthy water runs into the Lynn, but though I fished nearly every stream in our part of Exmoor in my boyhood, it was a long time before I dared go those two miles.  For the water flowed out of Glen Doone, where the Doones had settled, and I had good reason to be afraid of this wild band of outlaws.  It was an unhappy day for everybody on Exmoor when Sir Ensor Doone was outlawed by good King Charles, and came with his tall sons and wild retainers to the Bagworthy water.

This befell in 1640.  At first, the newcomers were fairly quiet, and what little sheep-stealing they did was overlooked.  But in the troublous times of the Great Rebellion they grew bolder and fiercer; they attacked men and burnt farms and carried off women, and all Exmoor stood in fear and terror of them.  None of the Doones was under six feet, and there were forty and more of them, and they were all true marksmen.  The worst thing they did was to murder my father, John Ridd, in the year 1673, when I was twelve years of age.

That was why I was afraid to fish the Bagworthy water.  But I spent a good deal of time in learning to shoot straight with my father’s gun; I sent pretty well all the lead gutter round our little church into our best barn door, a thing which has often repented me since, especially as churchwarden.  When, however, I was turned fourteen years old, and put into small clothes, and worsted hosen knitted by my dear mother, I set out with a loach-fork to explore the Bagworthy water.  It was St. Valentine’s day, 1676, as I well remember.  After wading along Lynn stream, I turned into the still more icy-cold current of Bagworthy water, where I speared an abundance of loaches.  I was stopped at last by a great black whirlpool, into which a slide of water came thundering a hundred yards down a cliff.  My bare legs were weak and numbed with cold, and twilight was falling in the wild, narrow glen.  So I was inclined to turn back.  But then I said to myself:  “John Ridd, the place is making a coward of thee.”

With that, I girt up my breeches anew, and slung the fish tighter round my neck, and began to climb up through the water-slide.  The green wave came down on me and my feet gave way, but I held with my loach-fork to a rock, and got my footing.  How I got up, I cannot remember, but I fainted on reaching the top of the cliff.