ered it
into a dwelling-house. Sir Richard, his grandson, sold it to John Hele
and Christopher Harrys, who were probably acting for Sir Francis Drake,
and he formally bought it of them ten months later. The house was built
in the body of the church, and it is still easy to trace its
ecclesiastical origin from some of the windows and architecture. In the
hall is a fine frieze, with raised figures in high relief and an
elaborate background, the subject a knight turned hermit. The knight,
wearing a hermit's robe, is sitting beneath spreading boughs, and a
skull is lodged in a hollow of the tree-trunk. His charger and his
discarded armour lie near him. In the same hall rests the famous drum
that went round the world with Drake, the drum referred to in the
traditional promise that Mr Newbolt has put into verse:

'Take my drum to England, hang it by the shore;
Strike it when the powder's running low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port of Heaven,
An' drum them up the Channel, as we drummed them long ago.'

A short distance below the Abbey, the Tavy, now broadened into a wide
but still shallow stream, ripples and hurries over the pebbles in a deep
valley between wooded hills. Returning to Tavistock and going up the
river, one arrives at the pretty and very remote village of Peter Tavy.
The houses are scattered about in an irregular group, a stream runs
through them to join the Tavy, and just above the wide bridge the brook
divides, flowing each side of a diamond-shaped patch, green with long
grass and cabbages. A steep slope leads up to the little church, which
stands back, and a tiny avenue of limes leads up to it from the
lichgate. The tower is battlemented, and the church must have been
partly rebuilt, for parts of it are early English and the rest late
Perpendicular. Within are slender clustered columns, supporting wide
arches, and different designs are sculptured on the sides of the granite
font.

Close by is a glen, which Mrs Bray says, 'I have ventured to name the
Valley of Waterfalls, on account of the vast number of small but
exquisitely beautiful falls seen there.' A narrow lane with high hedges
leads round the shoulder of the hill to the steep little valley, where
the Tavy jostles against obstructive boulders, and a high, narrow,
unstable-looking bridge of tarred timber (sometimes called a 'clam'
bridge) crosses the stream. Climbing up on the farther side, the road
soon reaches the villag