The story told in _The Maid of Sker_, of Chowne breaking up the road to prevent the bishop visiting him, is true. Dr. Phillpotts was then bishop, and he was eminently dissatisfied with what he heard of the ecclesiastical and moral condition of Blackamoor and its parson. He therefore drove there to make a personal visitation. Chowne, forewarned, employed men to dig up the road for a space of about twenty feet, and the hole they made was filled in with bog-water, then the whole lightly covered over with turf and strewn with dust. The Bishop's carriage and horses floundered in and was upset. Henry of Exeter was, however, not the man to be daunted by such an accident--that it was not an accident, but a deliberate attempt to stay his course, he saw at once by the condition of the road. He went on to Blackamoor, and reached the parsonage. There he found Chowne in his dining-room, sullen, with his wicked black eyes watching him. His head was for the most part bald, but he had one long wisp of dark hair that he twisted about his bald pate. Chowne put a bottle of brandy on the table, and a couple of tumblers, and bade the Bishop help himself. "No, thank you, Mr. Chowne," said the Bishop briefly. "Ah! my lord, you may do without it, maybe, at Exeter, but up at this height we must drink or perish of dulness." Then he helped himself to a stiff glass, and relapsed into silence. Presently the Bishop said-- "You keep hounds, I hear." "No, my lord, the hounds keep me." "I do not understand." "Well, then, you must be mighty stupid. They stock my larder with hares. You don't suppose I should have hares on my table unless they were caught for me. There's no butcher for miles and miles, and I can't get a joint but once in a fortnight maybe; what should I do without rabbits and hares? Forced to eat 'em, and they must be caught to be eaten." "Mr. Chowne," said Henry of Exeter, "I've been told that you have men in here with you drinking and fighting." "It's a lie. I admit that they drink,--every man drinks since he was a baby,--but fight in my dining-room! No, my lord! Directly they begin to fight I take 'em by the scruff of the neck, and turn them out into the churchyard, and let 'em fight out their difference among the tombs." "I am sorry to say, Mr. Chowne, that I have heard some very queer and unsatisfactory tales concerning you." "I dare say you have, my lord;" he fixed his strong eyes on the Bishop. "So have I of your lordship, very unpleasant and nasty tales, when I've been to Torrington or Bideford fairs. But when I do, I say it's a parcel of ---- lies. And when next you hear any of these tales about me, then you say, 'I know Tom Chowne very well--drunk out of his bottle of brandy--I swear that all these tales about him is also a parcel of lies."