looking as herself, were eagerly besetting her for natural nutriment. This impediment overcome, there was nothing to bar my way to the fire.

Bad as they may be, these North Devon barbarians -bestial, filthy, and inexpressibly vicious-they at least exhibited towards me, a chance visitor and complete stranger, an amount of hospitality that smote my conscience hard when I reflected how little I deserved it. A damsel of the tribe, aged apparently about twenty, with thick clouted boots on her feet like those of a maltster, and a white rag bound about her muscular jaws, caught up an antique pot or piggin of red clay, capable of holding, I should say, a couple of gallons. This she took out, and brought it back full. Then she got a little jug and half filled it with water, out of another vessel filled it up with milk, and presented it to me with the polite observation that "she wished as how it was cider, but they were quite out of it."

"You're a stranger?" said she, interrogatively. I nodded.

"Don't know the passen (parson), or any of them in these parts?"

"No; shouldn't know them if I saw them."

"There, I told thee so," said she, turning to the others; whereon, as though it was the constant recreation of their lives, and my entry had interrupted it, there arose a family chorus of the foulest abuse and cursing, directed against "passen" and all his friends, that might have made my blood run cold, only that I was stooping over the red-hot chumps and sticks to get a light for my pipe.

"Parson a bad sort?" I ventured to inquire.

"A reg'ler old," spoke the young gentleman in the ashes, deftly picking up a stick with his toes, and

thrusting it into the fire; "that's what I'd like to do wi' passen," a sentiment which was highly applauded by the rest, one of the girls adding, in far more idiomatic language than I dare use, that she would like to perform upon the gentleman in question the operation of disembowelling.

"He don't come here very often, I'll wager," I remarked, wickedly joining in the hideous laughter. This crowned the joke. Come there! "Passen come here! The little villain in the ashes was so tickled that he almost stood on his head, his mahogany-coloured legs writhing convulsively in the air; while a comely squaw of thirty, who as she sat in the dirt was engaged in patching an old pair of corduroy trousers with some twine and a carpet needle, flung aside her work to grasp her sides, they ached so with laughter.

"You're a droll 'un," exclaimed the old woman, grinning till she showed her toothless gums. "Passen come here! ho! ho! Gi' he some more milk, Lisa."

"I suppose the old fellow is too wide awake to chance it," was my next irreverent remark, for which I humbly beseech the clergyman's forgiveness.

"He ain't old, him; he's young enough to take a young wife," returned the female savage named Lisa. "He got married a bit ago, and come up with his—(it was a mercy that the villainous epithet she applied to the bride did not sear her heathen throat)-and we all of us went to the gate to gi' 'em a warmin'. Ha! ha! ho! ho! She won't forget us more'n passen will. It'll make him hotter agin us than ever, his carcase!"

I wanted to prolong my stay a little, so looked about for an excuse; and at that very moment the baby which the old woman was nursing thrust its little face forward, and presented a convenient, though at the same time an

appalling, pretext for talk. It was a ghastly contrast, that between the nurse and the child. The former was a creature wrinkled, gray, and hideously dirty, but still with some tigerish light in her deep-set eyes, which, combined with her flat, backward-slanting forehead, and her hard-set thin lips, betokened the constitutional inclination to vice that had tempted her to the dreadful path she had entered forty years ago, and which still sustained her in that path unashamed and dauntless. This was the female founder of the savage tribe by which she was now surrounded, and her arms held the last fruit of the inhuman stock-a five months old, as I was informed; but there were more than as many years of suffering in its poor little yellow, pinched face, its weak watery eyes that blinked shyly at the light, its frothed lips, and the sickening sores that disfigured it.

"Does the doctor come and see it?" I asked.

As

"He don't come here, he'd be afear'd; nobody comes here;" the old hag replied, with an ugly grin. "I takes it to the doctor, but he don't do it no good; and I ain't goin' to stand his humbuggin' any longer. It's been like it is ever since it was born: the biles come up on it, and they break and leave sores. Look here." she spoke, she turned the helpless infant savage over, and showed me its neck and shoulders; and glad indeed was I to escape from the sight on pretence that my pipe had gone out again, giving me an excuse for turning towards the fire. There was another baby somewhereI had learned that previously-and some allusion was made to it by a member of the family; but I could not see it anywhere, and I did not care to appear too curious. I did not like even to ask to which of the three strapping wenches present the poor little horror belonged.

And here I have to touch on the most repulsive and scandalous feature that distinguishes the North Devon haunt of savagery and its occupants. The facts are simply these: Here is a man-Cheriton by name—who takes a woman as his mate; and the pair agree to defy decency and goodness in any shape for the remainder of their lives, and "to do as they like." The den they inhabit at the present time is that in which more than forty years ago they first took residence. They can afford to keep aloof from their neighbours, their homestead being surrounded by about forty acres of good land, their own freehold. In the natural course of events, they have children; their daughters grow up and have children, and the latter in turn grow up and become mothers; but no one ever yet heard of a marriage in that awful family, or knew any male stranger to be on visiting terms with it. The only adults of the masculine sex ever heard of in relationship with the Cheritons are the old man, Christopher; his eldest son Willie, aged thirty-five or so; and the fourteen-year-old youth I have already mentioned.

They decline communication with the world outside the boundary hedges of their estate. Accidental encounters with civilized beings are invariably accompanied by conflict, physical or verbal. No one knows when a child is about to be born in this mysterious settlement, for they dispense with the services of a doctor and nurse each other. No one knows to whom a child belongs when it is born, nor are the neighbours usually aware of the fact until by chance some one gets a glimpse of the infant two or three months afterwards. Supposing the members of this awful tribe to be so inclined, they might dispose of their infant dead and nobody would be the wiser. The horrible suspicion is,

that they herd together like brutes of the field, and breed like them.

Thus saith rumour; and my personal observation enabled me to gather what may be regarded as corroborative evidence in support of much of it. The ground floor of the hovel is at once the living-place, the cooking-place, the pig-stye, and the sleeping-place. As I have mentioned, not a single article of furniture is contained within it; there is not even a bedstead. The family bed, on which repose savage old Christopher, Willie his middle-aged son, the old woman, the three strapping daughters, the big boy and the big girl, and the smaller fry, including the horrifying baby or babies, consists of an accumulation of foul straw, enclosed within rough-hewn posts driven into the earth.

It has been said that the tribe sleep in a pit; but if so, the pit has become filled in with fresh "layers" till now it is raised nearly two feet above the level of the ground. The bed space is about that of the floor of a country waggon, and in or about it not a vestige of sheet, or rug, or blanket was visible, thus there seems no choice but to suppose that they burrow in the straw like rats or ferrets, and so keep themselves

warm.

That they are more decent in their behaviour than they used to be, is allowed by every good authority in Nymet Rowland. I was informed by a gentleman whose extensive estate joins that of the savages, that not more than two years since, it was quite common to see dreadful old Christopher sunning himself at noon, with nothing but a wisp of dirty rag slung round his waist, his body being otherwise perfectly naked, except for the dirt that begrimmed it; while the daughters, grown women and mothers, thought nothing of attend