escribable drawling
utterance sang out "Thee Neck!"--sang it out three times, and twice the
waving circle of bright steel flashed.'

On leaving Honiton, if the river is followed upstream for a short
distance, the traveller will find himself close to ruined Ottery Mohun,
the home of two celebrated families in succession. Unfortunately, it has
been entirely destroyed by fire. A farm now stands among the ruins, and
two fine Perpendicular archways, and a deeply moulded and hooded arch
over the frontdoor, alone bear witness to its former state. In the
spandril above the outer archway is carved, 'amid elegant scroll-work
and foliage, an arm, vested in an ermine maunch, the hand grasping a
golden fleur-de-lys'--the old coat-armour of the Mohuns; and on the
other spandril 'three lions passant in pale,' the bearing of the Carews.

The Mohuns were a Norman family of distinction, but in later days were
notorious rather than famous. The old peerage having died out in the
Middle Ages, a member of a cadet branch, by shameless and persevering
begging, induced Charles I to grant him a barony. This title only
survived a few generations, and the fifth and last bearer of it was
known as 'the wicked' Lord Mohun. His life was short--he was barely over
forty when he died--but eventful, for he was twice tried before his
peers, each time on the charge of being accessory to a murder, and the
story has often been told of the desperate duel in which Lord Mohun was
killed by the Duke of Hamilton, whom he had mortally wounded. Spectators
burst upon the scene to discover the two principals dying on the ground,
and the two seconds fiercely fighting each other.

The history of the Carews is more interesting. Ottery Mohun came to them
towards the end of the thirteenth century, through the heiress of the
elder branch of Mohuns, whom John Carew married. Their names were
eminent in camp, court, and council, in one reign after another; but it
is only possible to speak here of two, Sir Gawen, and his nephew Sir
Peter, on whose death the branch that had been settled at Ottery Mohun
for three centuries became extinct in the direct line. There is not even
space for the career of another of Sir Gawen's nephews, to whom Queen
Elizabeth wrote, with her own hand, in regard to his efforts in subduing
the Irish:

'MY FAITHFUL GEORGE,

'If ever more services of worth were performed in shorter space
than you have done, we are deceived among many wi