They floundered on beside the weird hoof-prints, never doubting who had caused them. It was not the first visit that the devil, who, as Peter had rightly observed, has his terrestrial country house at Widdecombe, had paid to those parts. His last recorded visit had been to Topsham and its neighbourhood half-a-century before, when he had frightened the people so exceedingly that they dared not venture out of their houses even in daylight. That affair had excited the curiosity of the whole country, and although some of the wisest men of the time tried to find a satisfactory solution of the problem they only ended by increasing the mystery. The attractions of the west country have always proved irresistible to his Satanic Majesty. From his country home at Widdecombe-on-the-Moor he had sallied out repeatedly to fight men with their own carnal weapons. He tried to hinder Francis Drake from building his house with the stones of Buckland Abbey, and nobody at that time wondered why he had taken the Abbey under his special protection, though people have wondered since. It was the devil who, disguised as a simple moorman, invited the ambitious parson and his clerk to supper, and then led them into the sea off Dawlish. There can be no doubt about the truth of that story, because the parson and clerk rocks are still to be seen by any one. It was on Heathfield, near the Tavy, that the old market-woman hid the hare that the devil was hunting in her basket, and declared to the gentleman with the tail she had never seen the creature. It was the devil who spoilt the miraculous qualities of St. Ludgvan's well by very rudely spitting in the water; who jumped into the Lynher with Parson Dando and his dogs; and it was the devil who was subdued temporarily by Parson Flavel of Mullion; who was dismissed, again temporarily, to the Red Sea by Parson Dodge of Talland because he would insist upon pulling down the walls of the church as fast as they were built; and who was routed from the house that he had built for his friend the local cobbler in Lamorna Cove by famous Parson Corker of Bosava. Mary and Peter knew these stories and plenty of others. They didn't know that a canon authorising exorcism of the devil is still a part of the law of the established Church, and that most people, however highly educated, are little less superstitious than themselves.