Brooke--Brooke of Sarawak--who had bought it from Harry Terrell; or
rather it had been bought for him by the Baroness Burdett Coutts and
other admirers in England. Harry Terrell--a great sportsman in his
day--had been loth enough to part with it, and when the bargain was
first proposed, had named at random a price which was about double what
he had given for the place. The Rajah closed with the sum at once,
asked him to make a list of everything in the house, and put a price on
whatever he cared to sell. Terrell made a full list, putting what
seemed to him fair prices on most of the furniture, and high ones--
prohibitive he thought--on the sticks he had a fancy to keep. The Rajah
glanced over the paper in his grand manner, and says he, "I'll take it
all." "Stop! stop!" cried Terrell, "I bain't going to let you have the
bed I was married in!" "As you please; we'll strike out the bed,
then," the Rajah answered. That is how he took possession.

Burrator House, as I daresay you know, faces across the Meavy upon
Burrator Wood; and the wood, thanks to Terrell, had always been a sure
draw for a fox. I had tramped over from Tavistock on this particular
morning,--for I was new to the country, a young man looking around me
for a practice, and did not yet possess a horse,--and I sat on the slope
above the house, at the foot of the tor, watching the scene on the
opposite bank. The fixture, always a favourite one, and the Rajah's
hospitality--which was noble, like everything about him--had brought out
a large and brightly-dressed field; and among them, in his black coat,
moved Terrell on a horse twice as good as it looked. He had ridden over
from his new home, and I daresay in the rush of old associations had
forgotten for the while that the familiar place was no longer his.

The Rajah, a statue of a man, sat on a tall grey at the covert's edge,
directly below me; and from time to time I watched him through my