But we have paused at the town of the fords too long, and must gird up our loins to follow the Exe southwards to the county town, through scenery which, if on the whole less picturesque than that above Tiverton, is pleasing as one of the most fertile of Devonshire vales cannot but be. Four miles lower down we find ourselves at Bickleigh Bridge, one of the prettiest spots in this part of the Exe valley. Close by is Bickleigh Court, long a seat of the Devonshire Carews, and still belonging to members of the family, though sunk to the uses of a farmhouse. Bickleigh is of some note as the birthplace, towards the end of the seventeenth century, of Bampfylde Moore Carew, "King of the Beggars." Son of the rector of the parish, he was sent to Blundell's School, whence he ran away to avoid punishment for some trifling escapade, and threw in his lot with a tribe of gipsies. Next he emigrated to Newfoundland, but after a time came back, and soon signalised himself by eloping from Newcastle-on-Tyne with an apothecary's daughter, whom, however, he was afterwards good enough to marry. Having rejoined the gipsies, he became their king, and ruled over them until he was transported to Maryland as an incorrigible vagrant. Before long he contrived to escape, and lived for a while with a band of Red Indians. When he returned to civilisation it was in the guise of a Quaker, a part which he successfully played until he grew weary of it, and once more came back to his native land and his nomadic life. Some say that he was afterwards prevailed upon to adopt more settled habits, but of his closing years little is known. The hill to the right, a little below Bickleigh Bridge, is known as Cadbury Castle, a Roman encampment, and from its summit may be seen, away to the south-east, athwart the river, Dolbury Hill, which, according to the legend, shares with Cadbury a treasure of gold, guarded by a fiery dragon, who spends his nights flying from one hoard to the other. Now the Exe, flowing with a dignity befitting its maturity, receives the tribute of the Culm, which comes from the Blackdown Hills, on the Somerset border, passing Culmstock and Cullompton, and Killerton Park, a finely placed and magnificently wooded demesne of one of the most honourable of Devonshire houses, the Aclands. Over against the point of junction is Pynes, the seat of another family of high repute, the Northcotes, now Earls of Iddesleigh, looking down on the one side upon the valley of the Exe, and on the other upon that of the Creedy, a western affluent after which the town of Crediton is named.