The fourth theory, and one stated to have been shared by Blackmore himself (although he was not necessarily a prime expert in the matter) is that the Doones were Scottish exiles. We have but to spell the name “Doune” for it to be at once recognised as Scottish. Certainly it is no West of England patronymic. At what period this view of the puzzle holds those supposititious Dounes to have come from Scotland does not appear. Scottish history may, if necessary, be made to afford many likely junctures at which various people would find it advisable to seek a sanctuary abroad. Of recent years an odd claim to relationship with the Doones, involving an attempt to connect them with Scottish exiles, has been made by the owner of a curiosity-shop at Hunstanton, Norfolk. This person, Beeton by name, and his niece, one Ida M. Browne, who has adopted the pseudonym “Audrie Doon” for literary purposes, have since 1901 produced what purport to be old family portraits, relics, and documents, taking their history back to the seventeenth century and connecting them and the Doones with the Earl of Moray of the early years of that century. According to this story, a brother of the Earl of Moray assumed the name of Doune, and after much persecution in the course of family disputes over property, was obliged in 1620 to leave Scotland. This “Sir Ensor Doune” as the claim has it, settled in this neighbourhood, where he and his “were more or less hated and feared by the countryside until their return to Perthshire in 1699.” Thus Miss Ida M. Browne. From this Sir Ensor Doune was descended (always according to this showing) long lines of Dounes, or Doones. Among the “family relics” is an old oil-painting, inscribed “Sir Ensor Doune, 1679”; an ill-drawn daub representing an elderly man with small crumb-brush whiskers, and an expression which leaves the beholder in doubt as to whether he is half-drunk or half-mad: both Doone characteristics, if we have followed the legends at all attentively. Another item is an old flint-lock pistol inscribed on the barrel “C. Doone, 1681, Porlok,” and furnished further with a representation of skull and cross-bones. These, with a genealogy drawn up by one “Charles Doone of Braemar,” bringing the family down from 1561 to 1804, are the evidences adduced; together with what is put forward as the diary of a “Rupert Doune,” stated to have been a fugitive from Scotland after the rebellion of 1745. He, it appears, found his way at last to North Devon and Somerset; to the districts in which his seventeenth-century forbears had settled. Here are extracts from his journal: “Sept. 3rd, 1747.—Went to Barum on my way to the place they call Oare, where our people came after their cruel treatment at the hands of Earl Moray.”