In Peter Tavy there lived, until quite recently, an elderly man, who might have posed as the most incompetent creature in the West Country. It is hardly necessary to say he did not do so; on the contrary, he posed as a many-sided genius. He occupied a hideous little tin house, which would have been condemned at a glance in those parts of the country where building by-laws are in existence. At one time and another he had borrowed the dregs of paint-pots, and had endeavoured to decorate the exterior. As a result, one portion was black, another white, and another blue. Over the door a board appeared setting forth the accomplishments of Peter Tavy, as he may here be called. According to his own showing he was a clock-maker; he was a photographer; he was a Dartmoor guide; he was a dealer in antiquities; he was a Reeve attached to the Manor of Lydford; and he was a purveyor of manure. This board was in its way a masterpiece of fiction. Once upon a time a resident, anxious to put Peter's powers to the test, sent him an old kitchen-clock to repair. He examined and gave it as his opinion that the undertaking would require time. When a year had passed the owner of the clock requested Peter to report progress. He replied that the work was getting on, but "'Twas a slow business and 'twould take another six months to make a job of it." At the end of that period the clock was removed, almost by force, and it was then discovered that Peter had sold most of the interior mechanism to a singularly innocent tourist as Druidical remains unearthed by him in one of the shafts of Wheal Betsy. As a photographer he carried his impudence still further. Some one had given him an old camera and a few plates. He began at once to inveigle visitors--chiefly elderly ladies, "half-dafty maidens" he impolitely called them--down Tavy Cleave, where he would pose them on rocks and pretend to photograph them with plates which had already been exposed more than once. "If I doan't get a picture first time, I goes on till I do," he explained. Once, when Peter announced "'twas a fine picture this time," a gentleman of the party reminded him he had omitted to remove the cap from the lens. Peter was not to be caught that way: "I took 'en," he said, "I took 'en, but yew was yawning."