The Thief of Virtue 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 Certain tenement farms of Dartmoor lie in the rich regions about East Dart, and save where the Duchy of Cornwall has acquired them, they continue ... more »to be freeholds independent of the surrounding Forest. Hartland's most ancient walls still rise under the tor that names them, and beneath, as the vale opens southward, stand the snug and clustered homesteads of Lower Merripit; Runnage, risen from its ashes with fine, dawn- facing front; the ruin of Walna; Dury in the mire— black and white behind its oaken grove; Peshull's three massive dwellings, their medieval walls in places five feet thick. "With this venerable abode and Ilartland, the adjacent Bellaford's deep-eaved homesteads vie in age; and lower yet, where Dart approaches her sister stream from the west, stand the old mill of Babenay, Redden, not far distant, and Brimpts upon the river's western bank. Under ancient laws the heirs of these old-time tenements, or those who might purchase the inheritance of them, were at liberty to enclose eight further acres of the waste upon payment of an annual shilling for the use of the reigning monarch. These additional acres were called 'the newtake'; and as a result of the privilege, there sprang up an order of enclosed lands with dwelling- houses upon them. Such extensions have in process of time become farms on their own account, and we find now, in addition to the homesteads mentioned above, not a few centres of husbandry sprung from them. Of these may be named Higher Merripit and Stannon, near Post- bridge ; Bellaford Combe and Laughtor Hole in the great valley below. Another group of tenements shall be found nigh West Dart; but our concern is with a few of those already mentioned. To Stannon farm, beneath the hill of that name, Philip Ouldsbroom now turned his...« less