The river Author:Eden Phillpotts Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III THE COMMANDMENTS REMOVED by nearly two miles from the stealthy keeper, a young man named Timothy Oldreive pursued his sport. He was well knit a... more »nd cast in cleaner mould than Edgecombe. Trim and agile, with certain traces of delicate breeding about him, he presented a mystery to the country side; and his course of life was such that prophets of evil found a congenial theme and a picturesque text whereon to preach the ills of bad upbringing. Timothy was an orphan and the owner of a small tenement farm upon the banks of Cherrybrook. His patrimony lay within a valley under Belaford Tor, where this stream ran. The river then passed beneath a moorland road between Two Bridges and Ashburton, and presently, dipping into a wild confusion of peat cuttings, flowed into Dart. The courage of Oldreive's grandfather, the preservance of his father, had made Cherry- brook Farm a place of some account. Saved from ruin by their energies, the reclaimed land was now of high quality for that region, and yielded annual hay and roots nearly sufficient for the keep of the stock in winter. The farm enjoyed Rights of Venville—those immemorial privileges of moor-men that may be traced beyond Norman times, and by which dwellers within the Forest of Dartmoor and its precincts are permitted to take all manner of things from the land that may do them good, " excepting only vert and venison." Now Oldreive dwelt with a hind or two at Cherry- brook, and his parents rested from their labours. There was a story against his mother that accounted for the young man's distinction and peculiarities, though this rumour had slept but for the life that Timothy led. He indeed revived it by his own manner of conduct, while tale-bearers and such as loved to sow scandal, saw further proof of their story in...« less