near the church one Sunday morning many centuries ago.  It appeared that a local squire named Coppleston, a man of bad temper and vile disposition, when at dinner made some gross remarks which were repeated in the village by his son.  He was so enraged when he heard of it, on the Sunday, that as they were leaving the church he threw his dagger at the lad, wounding him in the loins so that he fell down and died.  An oak tree was planted near the spot, and was still pointed out as the Coppleston Oak.  The father meanwhile fled to France, and his friends obtained a conditional pardon for him; but to escape being hanged he had to forfeit thirteen manors in Cornwall.

[Illustration:  TAMERTON CHURCH AND THE FATAL OAK]

We were now fairly off the beaten track, but by devious ways, with lovely wooded and river scenery to the left and the wild scenery of Dartmoor to the right, we managed to reach Buckland Abbey.  This abbey was founded in 1278 by the Countess of Baldwin-de Redvers, Earl of Devon, and we expected to find it in ruins, as usual.  But when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, he gave Buckland to Sir Richard Grenville, who converted it into a magnificent mansion, although some few of the monastic buildings still remained.  He formed the great hall so as to be under the great central tower of the old abbey, and the dining-room he formed out of a portion of the nave, while the drawing-room was at the end of a long gallery upstairs; so that altogether it formed a unique structure.  In 1581, however, it was sold to Sir Francis Drake, and the mansion contained some relics of his, amongst which were two drums; there were also a chair and a table made out of one of his old ships, the Pelican, and a fine portrait of Sir Francis by Jansen, dated 1594.  The gardens were very beautiful, as the trees in this sheltered position grew almost without let or hindrance; there were some of the finest tulip trees there that we had ever seen.  We were informed that when Sir Francis Drake began to make some alteration in his new possessions, the stones that were built up in the daytime were removed during the night or taken down in some mysterious manner.  So one moonlight night he put on a white sheet, and climbed a tree overlooking the building, with the object of frightening any one who might come to pull down the stones.  When the great clock which formerly belonged to the old abbey struck the hour of twelve, he saw the earth open below, and about twenty little black devils came out and started to pull down the wall.  Sir Francis began to move his arms about and flap them as if they were wings, and then crowed like a cock.  The devils, when they heard the white bird crowing, looked up, and, thinking the morning must be close at hand, immediately disappeared to the regions below.  We could not learn if or how often these performances were repeated, but it seemed a very unlikely thing for Sir Francis Drake to do, and the story sounded as if it belonged to a far remoter period than that of the Spanish Armada.