Save for the passing of groups of “Lorna Doone” pilgrims, the place is very solitary. The hills that look down upon the valley here rise higher, and draw closer in, swooping down in naked round outlines in the foreground, and filling in the distance with dense blue-black plantations of larch. The bald outlines of those near at hand are sharply accented by a wind-swept lone thorn-tree that stands out curiously against the sky. Below it, stretching down the hillside is an ancient earthwork, in shape roughly like the letter Y; and down below this again, the Badgworthy Water foams and slides amidst its boulders. Quietly walking through the little wood, and then silently along the grassy paths through the almost breast-high bracken beyond, I started a fox from his summer afternoon sleep on a sun-warmed boulder; a fine, but gaunt fellow of crimson hue, and with a magnificent brush. Not one of your full-fed Midland foxes, plump with a long career of raids on poultry-runs, but one accustomed to picking up a mere living by sheer hard work in these wilds. He loped leisurely away into the woods, with an easy swinging gait that looked deceptively slow. Up along there, where he disappeared amid the tangled branches, a monstrous square mass of rock stands half-revealed, remarkably like some ancient stone-built house; a veritable Mockbeggar Hall, that, on a near approach, is found to be no habitation of man, but a crannied, cliff-like place, partly draped with ivy; the home of jackdaws, and tunnelled about the base of it with the runs of hares and rabbits. And thus, at length one comes to the terrible “Doone Valley,” or, as it is better, and correctly known, Lankcombe; a pretty vale branching to the right, not in the least terrible, you know, and in fact rather dull and commonplace, after the beauties of Badgworthy. Perhaps the enthusiastic Lorna Dooneite, if he would keep his enthusiasm, had better not adventure thus far; for though he may indeed see some problematic ruins and doubtful foundations of houses, he will assuredly be keenly disappointed. A commonplace shepherd’s hut looks down upon the scene, young plantations mantle the quite unremarkable hills, and romance fails to keep the expected tryst.