And now, over the steep hill dividing Welcombe Mouth from Marsland Mouth, we come to the conclusion of the coast of North Devon. Marsland Mouth is a fit ending: the very culmination of loneliness. If the scenery of its seaward end is not so rugged as that of many of these “mouths,” the extraordinary exuberance of the close-grown thorn, oak, and hazel thickets that have entirely overgrown the valley is unparalleled anywhere else in all these miles. Only a rugged footpath, closely beset with bushes, leads down to the shore. It must be admitted, however, that evidence of Marsland Mouth being within touch of modern life is not lacking--is only too evident, indeed--in two huge, outrageously ugly, plaster-faced houses, of the very worst type of Ladbroke Grove “architecture,” that look down from a ridge into the romantic cleft. The atrocity of their being placed here is beyond words. I have styled Marsland Mouth “romantic,” and not without due warrant; for does it not appear, early in the pages of “Westward Ho!” as the scene of Rose Salterne’s adventure with the “white witch,” Lucy Passmore? White witch or black, her beliefs were sufficiently dark, and the mystic rites she practised were as uncanny as any of those in common usage by the more inimical kind of witches--the kind who “overlooked” you, played the very deuce and all with your sheep and cattle, and generally harboured a “familiar” in the shape of a black tom cat. And really, as you read of her in Kingsley’s pages, she was a person to be feared, on more than supernatural grounds, being as brawny and muscular as a man: a good deal more so than her husband. It must be no sinecure, to be the husband of a witch, and a muscular one at that. A stranger, tracing his hazardous way that night down the tangled glen, to the sea, would have had any stray beliefs he may have harboured as to the existence of mermaids presently confirmed; for we read that Rose, wishing to see who would be her future husband, by direction of the witch, undressed on the midnight beach, in the cold light of the full moon, waded waist-deep, into the sea with her mirror, and performed the incantation. Except that Kingsley speaks of the “blaze” of the midnight moon, it is a magnificent scene. Ordinary observers are at one with the poets--and at odds with Kingsley--in thinking of moonlight as a cold flood, rather than as a “blaze.” A ring of flame, from the phosphorescence she stirred as she waded into the water, encircled her waist, and, as she looked down into the waves, every shell that crawled on the white sand was visible under the moonbeams, while the seaweeds waved like banners. Almost determined to turn and flee she, with an effort, dipped her head three times in the water, hurried out of the waves, and, looking through the strands of her wet hair into the mirror she carried, repeated the verse the white witch had taught her: