



Produced by David Widger





CROCKER'S HOLE

By R. D. Blackmore

From "SLAIN BY THE DOONES" by R. D. Blackmore
Copyright: Dodd, Mead And Company, 1895




CHAPTER I.

The Culm, which rises in Somersetshire, and hastening into a fairer
land (as the border waters wisely do) falls into the Exe near Killerton,
formerly was a lovely trout stream, such as perverts the Devonshire
angler from due respect toward Father Thames and the other canals round
London. In the Devonshire valleys it is sweet to see how soon a spring
becomes a rill, and a rill runs on into a rivulet, and a rivulet swells
into a brook; and before one has time to say, "What are you at?"--before
the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever
ran down has turned blue, here we have all the airs and graces, demands
and assertions of a full-grown river.

But what is the test of a river? Who shall say? "The power to drown a
man," replies the river darkly. But rudeness is not argument. Rather
shall we sa