The very oxen at midnight will fall down on their knees before the manger. The next turn brings us to the Otter rushing along some forty feet below with angry stream.' Almost at the mouth of the river is the village of Otterton, and here was a Benedictine Priory, founded in the reign of King John. The Prior of this little monastery had certain privileges. Amongst others, ten marks had to be subscribed among the tenants for 'a palfrey to be presented to a new Prior on his coming to reside in the midst of his flock, and every plough had to plough one acre of land for him annually.' He had the 'right of pre-emption of fish in all his ports, and the choice of the best fish.' Conger-eels were specially mentioned in a marginal note. Besides this, he claimed every porpoise caught in the sea or other neighbouring waters, but paid for it with twelve pence and a loaf of white bread to each sailor, and two to the master of the boat from which it was caught. Lastly, the Prior claimed the half of every dolphin. But no Prior is likely to have had many chances of asserting this right. The river runs into the sea by the charming little town of Budleigh Salterton; but it is more interesting to cross the water at Otterton, and passing through the village of East Budleigh, nearly opposite, to go towards Hayes Barton, the house where Sir Walter Raleigh was born. Fardell, near Ivybridge, was the ancestral home of the Raleighs, but Sir Walter's father settled at Budleigh. In front of the garden a swirling stream crosses a strip of green; and in the garden, at the right time, one may see the bees busy among golden-powdered clusters of candytuft, and dark-red gillyflowers, and a few flame-rose-coloured tulips, proud and erect. The house is very picturesque; it has cob walls and a thatched roof, and is built in the shape of the letter E; a wing projects at either end, and in the middle the porch juts out slightly. The two wings are gabled; there is a small gable over the porch and two dormer ones over the windows at each side of it, the windows having lattice lights and narrow mullions. Dark carved beams above them show up well against the cream-coloured walls. The heavy door is closely studded with nails, and over it fall the delicate sprays and lilac 'butterfly' blossoms of a wistaria. The house has been little altered, and its outward appearance was probably almost the same in Sir Walter's boyhood as it is to-day. In front of Hayes Barton is a hill covered with oak-woods, and to the west the ground begins to slope upwards to the high moorland of Woodbury Common. Sir Walter had a great affection for his boyhood's home, and later, in trying to buy it back, he wrote to the then owner: 'I will most willingly give you whatsoever in your conscience you shall deem it worth; ... for ye naturall disposition I have to that place, being borne in that house, I had rather seat myself there, than anywhere else.'