t, and for the rest of the
year can afford to doze peacefully behind their bars. Here are the
kennels, and when I visited them they contained forty or fifty couples
of stag-hounds. These are gigantic foxhounds, selected for their great
size from packs all over the country. When out exercising these big
vari-coloured dogs make a fine show. It is curious to find that,
although these individual variations are continually appearing--very
large dogs born of dogs of medium size--others cannot be bred from them;
the variety cannot be fixed.

The village is not picturesque. Its one perennial charm is the swift
river that flows through it, making music on its wide sandy and
pebbly floor. Hither and thither flit the wagtails, finding little
half-uncovered stones in the current to perch upon. Both the pied and
grey species are there; and, seeing them together, one naturally wishes
to resettle for himself the old question as to which is the prettiest
and most graceful. Now this one looks best and now that; but the
delicately coloured grey and yellow bird has the longest tail and can
use it more prettily. Her tail is as much to her, both as ornament and
to express emotions, as a fan to any flirtatious Spanish senora. One
always thinks of these dainty feathered creatures as females. It would
seem quite natural to call the wagtail "lady-bird," if that name had
not been registered by a diminutive podgy tortoise-shaped black and red
beetle.

So shallow is the wide stream in the village that a little girl of about
seven came down from a cottage, and to cool her feet waded out into
the middle, and there she stood for some minutes on a low flat stone,
looking down on her own wavering image broken by a hundred hurrying
wavelets and ripples. This small maidie, holding up her short, shabby
frock with her wee hands, her bright brown hair falling over her face as
she bent her head down and laughed to see her bare little legs and their
flickering reflection beneath, made a pretty picture. Like the wagtails,
she looked in harmony with her surroundings.

So many are the villages, towns, and places of interest seen, so many
the adventures met with in this walk, starting with the baby streamlet
beyond Simonsbath, and following it down to Exeter and Exmouth, that it
would take half a volume to describe them, however briefly. Yet at the
end I found that Exford had left the most vivid and lasting impression,
and was remembered with most pleasure. It