CHAPTEB I. 
DOWN A COMBE TO THE SEA. 
We had taken a hurried peep at Grlenthorne as it was settling 
down to repose, bathed in the dying splendour of the sun- 
set ; had followed the bewildering paths which led like a 
maze around the hills that shut in the combe, and had hoped 
(weary though we were at the close of a long journey from 
Porlock) that we might reach Lynton ere nightfall. But the 
Count! shury Inn, midway, was too suggestive of the rest 
which we needed to make it possible to resist the temptation 
to spend the night in the quiet of the little hamlet which 
nestles near the top of Countisbury Hill. We had no cause 
to regret our choice of a resting-place ; for wandering out 
and around Countisbury in the early morning we lighted on a 
most charming comhe running down to the sea. 
The entrance to this combe had the appearance of a deep 
gully, and we were tempted to explore it, because of the 
sudden wealth of ferny forms which it displayed. Along its 
bed a stream ran murmuring down. Its sides were clothed 
with a rich profusion of the light green golden fronds of 
the exquisitely scented Mountain Buckler Fern, with tall 
forms of Bracken, and with Blechnum spicant in its greatest 
depth of glossy green. Intermingled with these were the 
shuttlecock shapes of Lastrea filix-mas , and many a form of 
the graceful Lady Fern. The gully sides, fringed on their 
tops by groups of the Broad and of the Mountain Buckler 
Fern, were of red sandstone earth, the vivid colouring of 
