When we have passed the stony stream and pack-horse bridge of Postbridge the scenery is less interesting for a mile or two, for this is the more civilised part of the Moor--a fact that has a brighter side in a comfortable luncheon at Two Bridges. Unless we change our minds and take the beautiful road to Plymouth, we turn to the right here after crossing the stream, and leave Princetown and all its heavy hearts behind us on the left. When the highest point of this road is passed and the long descent begun, the scenery is again of that well-wearing kind that can be stored and put away for the winter. And if I pay scant attention to the vast host of most venerable relics with which Dartmoor is dotted--I had almost said _crowded_--this is not because neolithic man seems to me a person of little account, but because the study of his life and times is not one that can be taken up suddenly on a motor-tour. For one wayfarer who takes heed of the menhir, and the stone-row, and the pound near Merivale Bridge, there will always be a hundred to gaze eagerly from the hilltop at the long line of dark and rugged tors that stretches across the immense landscape, and at the gleaming Hamoaze on the left, and at the clear outline of Brent Tor Chapel on its rock, and above all at blue Cornwall meeting the blue sky. In the middle of this picture Tavistock lies, and we run down into it on a splendid road.
The abbey that once gave renown to Tavistock has nearly vanished, but even its fragments--an archway and an ivy-covered tower--are enough to bring beauty and distinction into these pleasant streets. Ordgar, the man who founded it, was the father of Elfrida, the wicked Queen who gave her stepson a stirrup-cup, and had him stabbed while he was drinking it. It was in Tavistock or near it that she spent her childhood, and to Tavistock that Ethelwold was sent by the King, to see if her beauty deserved a crown. Ethelwold, seeing her, forgot all else and married her himself. “She is in noe wise for feature fitt for a king,” he told King Edgar. Then the King, whom men did not lightly deceive, came hither to Tavistock to judge for himself, and Ethelwold at bay told the truth to his wife, begging her--poor ignorant man!--“to cloath herself in such attire as might least set forth her lustre.” Elfrida smiled; and when her lord was gone arrayed herself in all she had that was most rich and beautiful, so that “the sparkle of her fair look” made the King mad for love of her. The next day he took Ethelwold out upon the Moor to hunt, and left him there with an arrow through his heart; and after all Elfrida became a queen.