sound; they circle once or twice, and then sink back to
their homes again. It is a beautiful sight to watch a rook volplaning
down to a tree as you can watch them from the terraces at Lynton;
moving on a level with your eye, you can see the detail of each
movement of their wings, see them let themselves drop through the air,
yet with muscles taut and legs and claws stretched ready for a foothold
on the particular slender branch which is home.

As you watch, amused and interested, as this protracted nightly
programme is enacted--and never yet, throughout England, have any rooks
gone to bed quietly--the colour fades from the headland and the sea,
the mist has gained on the valley, drawing its grey wisps and streamers
higher and higher up the sides of the gorge; the tide has gone out,
very smooth and still, leaving a broad flat stretch of wet shore in the
little bay, which shines with the last of the daylight like a clear
mirror; the lights of the houses in Lynmouth begin to show through the
trees, pale yellow in the twilight, patches of soft colour, rather than
light; and the rushing of the river sounds very loud because of the
silence of the birds. Inland the hills lie, fold behind fold, in
gentle, misty curves; it is that exquisite hour which only northern
summers give, when the slowly-fading twilight and the slowly
brightening moon hold earth and sky in a faint pellucid light.

Or take a walk, on a bright May morning, from Lynton to Heddon's Mouth,
along the cliffs, and see open before you, step by step, seven miles of
the loveliest coast scenery, perhaps, in England.

First there is a wooded strip of road, called the North Walk, which
runs round the side of Hollerday Hill. The shadows are dewy in the
early morning, and birds are singing from the green mass of the trees
on either hand; there is a faint smell of wood-fires from the houses
below, acrid and very pleasant; the chestnut leaves are just opening,
and the sycamores have still the early flush of red on their tiny
leaves; it is very cool and fresh under the trees. Then the wood stops
abruptly, and the road runs out on the bare hillside and winds round
the great headland to the Valley of Rocks. Behind, the wall of cliff
rises steeply, great boulders and outcrop of rock, fantastic in the
sunlight; below it falls sheer to the sea, where the misty blue turns
green at the base of the cliff. Looking down the sheer slope, which is
dull brown with last year's he