Presently Oare church appears, on the left hand, almost wholly hidden in a circle of tall, spindly trees, and neighboured only by one farm. It is a grey, sad-toned building, this centre of interest in Lorna’s tragedy. Chiefly in the Perpendicular style, it consists of an embattled western tower and a nave without aisles. The chancel is a modern addition. All day and every day in the summer an old man sits in the little north porch, with the key of the church on a bench beside him, and if, not seeing the key, you try the door, and, finding it locked, ask him, he will give it you, and leave you to let yourself in: mutely remaining there, a living hint for a tip. “Lorna Doone” has done this. “Parish clerk, he be, an’ used to be saxon,” remarked an old road-mender. “He do mek’ a dale o’ money,” is the rustic opinion; but what amount may be represented by “a deal of money” in this estimate does not appear. Also, “Dree an’ saxpunz a wik,” he gets from the parish: so there is no old age pension for him; and unless the parish of Oare, in a fit of wild extravagance, springs another eighteenpence, he will be a loser. The interior of Oare church is, truth to tell, lamentably uninteresting, and architecturally deplorable. A something wooden, that does duty for chancel screen, divides nave from sanctuary, and a few characterless marble and slate tablets are affixed to the walls: one of them to the memory of a Nicholas Snow, 1791. A tablet to various members of the Spurryer family exhibits a curious uncertainty as to how the name should be spelled. “Spurre” and “Spurry” are the two other versions given. The name of “Peter Spurryer, Warden, 1717,” appears under one of a couple of fearsome paintings in the tower, representing Moses and Aaron; the work of one “Mervine Cooke, Painter.” [Illustration: INTERIOR OF OARE CHURCH.] Under a deplorable representation of the triple Prince of Wales’ feathers, placed on the wall near the pulpit, to commemorate a visit of the Prince of Wales in 1863 will be found the only interesting object in the church: a rudely carved stone bracket supporting what was once a piscina. Shaped in the form of a head, the expressionless face is flanked by two hands. Very few visitors can have any notion of the meaning of this grotesque object, and most people set it down as a mere fantasy; but the thing is symbolical, and really typifies the Divine gift of speech. Other examples are found throughout England: notably in the churches of Bere Regis, in Dorsetshire, and Gotham, Nottinghamshire.[8] This carving is by far the oldest thing in Oare church, and is probably a relic from some earlier building. Footnote 8: See _The Manchester and Glasgow Road_, Vol. I., pp. 265-6; and _The Hardy Country_, p. 143. From Oare we come directly to Malmsmead where the Badgworthy Water divides Somerset and Devon, and is spanned by a grey, timeworn, two-arched bridge.