companies _Master Huckaback_ in
search of a warrant against the _Doones_. In fact, all the way from
Barnstaple over the parapet of whose bridge _Tom Faggus_ leaped his
wonderful mare, every nook and corner of the countryside teems with
legends of the _Doones_. From Lynton we drive over the border into
Porlock, in Somerset that quaint little village where Coleridge wrote
his "Kubla Khan," and where Lord Lovelace brought Ada Byron to his seat
of Ashley Combe.

It was while riding home from Porlock market that _John Ridd's_ father
was murdered by the _Doones_, and from Porlock we drove in a pony-trap
over the high moors to Malmsmead, in search of the ruined huts of the
_Doones_.

[Illustration: xv.jpg Malmsmead]

Over the heights of Yarner Moor, and past Oare Ford (now bridged over),
the road lay past the old church of Oare, where _Lorna Doone_ and _John
Ridd_ were married, and then into the deep flowery lanes that are the
glory of Devon and Somerset. Malmsmead proved to be a little cluster of
heavily thatched cottages, nestled under overhanging trees, where stood
an ancient signboard with "Ba_d_gworthy" on one of its arms, pointing
the way we should go. This _d_ on the old sign-board accounted for the
local pronunciation of _Badgery_, as the river is always called.

At Malmsmead the road ends, and thence one must proceed on foot. Several
deep and flowery lanes lead one at length to the river where a lonely
stone cottage stands on its further brink. This is Clowd Farm, and here
all paths cease. Two hundred years ago, in the time of the _Doones_,
the narrow valley through which the Bagworthy now dances in the open
sunshine was filled with trees; but now, with the exception of a
withered and stunted old orchard and grove near the farm, there is not a
tree to be seen, and the Bagworthy, a lonely but cheerful trout stream,
rattles along in the broad sunshine through a deep valley, whose sides
slope steeply upward.

After walking about three miles into the heart of the wilderness,
another deep glen, shut in by the same sloping heather-covered hills,
suddenly opens to the right. There are no cliffs, no overhanging trees,
not even a bush, but all along the stream, "with its soft, dark babble,"
lie heaps and half-circles of stone nearly buried in the turf, and
almost hidden by the tall ferns and foxgloves. And this is what we went
out for to see! These are the ruins of the _Doones'_ huts. There could
not be anything more dis