A rainy day at the seaside, unless, indeed, it be at some huge wen like Brighton or Scarborough, is enough to give even a Mark Tapley thoughts of committing _hari kari_. The only local optimists then are the boatmen, and they beat every possible Tapley into fits; with them it is always a fine day--for a sail. Nothing is to do on a seaside wet day. Nothing to read at the circulating library: the old maids have borrowed all the spicy novels, and left nothing on the shelves but such enthralling devotional works as “Skates and Shin-plasters for Backsliders” for the appeasement of your literary hunger. The local news-room on such depressing occasions contains a parish magazine, the last number of Blowhard’s “Sermons,” Sharpshin’s “Local Gazetteer and Directory,” last week’s London papers, and half-a-hundredweight of “Bits” prints. With even all this wealth of literature you are not happy, but long, like Wellington at Waterloo, for night and--oblivion. Charmouth was the scene of a thrilling incident in the hunted wanderings of Charles II., for it was here that he sought to have his horse’s cast shoe replaced, and was imperilled by the blacksmith’s discovery that the shoes were of a make unknown in that part of the country. We had of late experienced a sufficiency of rough walking, and so struck inland to avoid Lyme Regis and the seaward cliffs. In another three miles we had reached the Devon border, where the highway, running on a lofty ridgway, is carried through a spur of the hills in tunnel. For rather more than a mile the road forms the boundary line between the counties of Devon and Dorset, right and left. Then came, at the end of a long rising vista, bordered by murmuring pines, the welcome sign of Hunter’s Lodge Inn, where we celebrated our entrance upon Devon soil by draughts of cider. Here was a humorous wheelman, garbed fearfully in white flannel breeches and black jacket, who retailed his experiences of rural inns on Dartmoor, experiences in a minor key, for he told us in happy epigram that, in Devon at least, innkeepers divided creation into an unholy Trinity of man, beast, and cyclist, and that, of the three, the cyclist was the lowest order. [Illustration: “HUMOROUS WHEELMAN, GARBED FEARFULLY.”] Two miles and a half further on, and we came to the dull little market-town of Axminster, beside the clear-running Axe. XXVIII.