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CHAPTER XII.

OKEHAMPTON

Origin of Okehampton obscure—The Ockments—Moor seekers—Okehampton Castle—French prisoners—Church—Belstone and Taw Marsh—Cranmere Pool—Tavy Cleave—South Zeal—Prehistoric monuments—An evening at the "Oxenham Arms"—The Oxenham white bird—Mining misadventures—"Old vayther"—Ecclesiological excursions—Early Christian monuments.

WHAT brought Okehampton into existence? It is not fathered by the castle, nor mothered by the church. Both have withdrawn to a distance and repudiated responsibility in the stunted bantling. It "growed not of itself," like Topsy, for it did not grow at all; it stuck.

Sourton Down on the west, Whiddon Down on the east—where the devil, it is reported, caught cold—Dartmoor on the south, shut Okehampton in. It was open only to the wintry north, where population is sparse.

Formerly, once in the day, once only did the mail coach traverse the one long street, ever on the yawn, and this was the one throb of life that ran through it. No passenger descended from the coach, no meals were taken, no lodging for the night was sought. The mails were dropped and the coach passed away.

There were, in Okehampton, no manufacture, no

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