‘Nothing, nothing, Mrs Whyte, only a habit I have of quoting the poets to myself when I’m absent-minded. What a curious crow that is, there, flying away from us to the cliff; it has red beak and legs!’
‘Yes, that’s a Cornish chough—you know that fine old glee, ‘The chough and crow to rest are gone.’ I’m sorry to say there are very few of them left; loafing louts, with guns in their hands, are extirpating all our rare British birds. I heard some popping about last Sunday.’
The next day they all made an excursion southwards to see the old ruin of Dundayel or Tintagel Castle, on a jutting rock about twenty miles from Bude, along the cliff; a day or two afterwards they went to Hartland Point, the interesting headland which forms the north-west corner of Devon and divides the Bristol Channel from the ocean on that side. Short outings for the day like these were made by the Whytes in their pony-carriage, Lesbia accompanying it on her machine when the roads were fair; but Mr Whyte soon proposed a little tour inland, which was agreed to readily, and as the railway, which had been extended to Stratton, a country town at a short distance, would come into requisition, Lesbia decided wisely to leave her bicycle behind.
They accomplished a pleasant tour to all the well-known places of interest on the north Devon coast, and finished by turning inland to the Dartmoor hills, where Lesbia greatly liked the wild, desolate moors and tors, with their gigantic masses and druidical circles and cromlechs, varied here and there by wooded glens with brown mountain burns purling in their depths, from which they had many a basket of fresh caught trout for breakfast. Although the weather sometimes recalled Carrington’s lines to Devon,—
A breeze, a shower, for ever on thy plains,’
yet they had many glorious days, and, in spite of her love
