Outside these rooms is a large open space, now grass-grown, and the sprays and buds of a cluster-rose tap against the massive walls. Close by lies a heavy round of granite, slightly hollowed out towards the centre, which is shown as one of the stones used for grinding corn. In an upper room is a hiding-place for treasure--two long, shallow cavities in the floor, of which there cannot have been the slightest sign when the floor was covered with planking. A vaulted passage leads to the south court, and in one corner of this court rises a watch-tower over a horrible little dungeon or chamber of torture. The walls throughout the whole building are from two and a half to four feet thick, and a thick and solid wall nearly twenty-four feet high protects an inner court, where even in January the turf is firm, springy, and close. At the farther end, on steps leading into the garden, a peacock looks wonderfully appropriate, and some white fantails strutting in front of the heavy walls add very much to the picture. There is scarcely any sign of the old 'pleasaunce,' except a low and fairly broad box-hedge, which runs each side of a path in the present garden, where a few violets and one or two strawberry-blossoms are tokens of the softness of the air. The Castle has changed owners many times. 'Stephen' held it of Judhael of Totnes; then it passed to the De la Poles; Lady Alice de la Pole gave it to the Comptons, and seven generations later a Compton heiress brought it, in the reign of Edward II, to the family of Gilberts, of whom Sir Humphrey Gilbert was a descendant. The Gilberts seem to have lived alternately at Compton and on their older property, Greenway, and with one interval the castle belonged to them till nearly the end of the eighteenth century. The only trace of them now to be seen is in the spandrels of a small cinquefoil-headed opening on the projecting gabled wing to the south of the central door. Each spandrel is sculptured with their crest, a squirrel holding a hazel branch. Mr Eden Phillpotts has painted the ruins with a characteristic touch: 'At gloaming time, when the jackdaws make an end of day, when weary birds rustle in the ivy ere they sleep, hearts and eyes, gifted to feel and see a little above the level prose of working hours, shall yet conceive these heroes of old moving within their deserted courts. Some chambers are still whole, and bats sidle through the naked window at the call of dusk; some are thrown open to sun and rain and storm; the chapel stands intact; the scoop for holy water lies still within the thickness of its wall. But aloft, where rich arras once hid the stone, and silver sconces held the torch, Nature now sets her hand, brings spleenwort and harts-tongue, trails the ivy, the speedwell, and the toad-flax....