On a rise, above the river and the village street, stands the “fayre howse” built by Richard Duke, who in 1539 bought the Otterton property of Sion Abbey, and set up for lord of the manor. His shield-of-arms, sculptured over the door, is still visible, but his fair house has come down in the world, and the line of Duke of Otterton ended in 1775, when the Rolles acquired their belongings. The traveller in South East Devon very soon has a surfeit of Rolles, who seem to be pervading the land and rebuilding the interesting churches, and generally occulting everything. Here again the old church has been replaced by a new. Below church and manor-house runs the lovely Otter to the sea. The Otter is twin brother to the Axe, and the Exe is the big brother of both. The strath—that is to say the verdant, low-lying meadowland—of the Otter is of that quiet, wooded, pastoral beauty which makes the nearness of the sea seem strange. But the speciality of the Otter seems to be its pebbles, or “popples,” as the name is, locally. There are more pebbles on the Chesil Beach; but then, that is one of the two greatest repositories for them in the world, and the popples of the Otter and of the seashore at Budleigh Salterton, where they are not only numerous, but very fine and large as well, are a class to themselves. Little beaches of them skirt the course of the river, and the matter of two and a half miles up-stream from Otterton is a village, as one may say, dedicated to them, in its name of Newton Poppleford; and there the popples muster as strongly as ever by the ford, which is now superseded by a bridge. But now, crossing the Otter, we come to East Budleigh, by threading the mazes of two or three byways. East Budleigh is a pretty village, with a little stream, clear-running, down one side of its street and a great church on the rise at the end; but, for all that, I should not have come out of the way to see it, were it not that a landmark of more than common interest lies half a mile on the other side. That landmark is Hayes Barton, the still extant farmstead that was the birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh. [Illustration: EAST BUDLEIGH.]