It is “To the memory of Mrs. Tamosin, wife of Peter Lyde, Deceased ye 25 of Febru. MDCLXIII,” and is inscribed upon a heart-shaped mural monument:— “Long may thy name, as long as marble, last, Beloved Tamosin, though under clods here cast. This formall heart doth truly signify ’Twixt wife and husband cordiell unity. If to be graccius doth requir due praise Let Tamosin have it, she deserves ye bayes.” It is curious to observe how the “Mrs.” has been inserted before “Tamosin,” as an afterthought. We seem to see in it a post-mortem jealousy on the part of the bereaved Peter Lyde that any one should use the name of his lost Tamosin without that formal title. The passengers landing at Duncannon Quay are few; often there are none at all, and the few are rarely other than country-folk making for their quiet villages. For the average tourist to land at Duncannon, instead of completing the time-honoured trip to Totnes, would be an originality never likely to enter into the mind of him. He takes the excursion trips as he finds them, and is content. And, being content, who shall blame him? Not I, for one; for his satisfaction with the well-worn round is of itself no ignoble thing in this dear Devonshire, where even the most frequented circuits are exquisite, and crowds unknown. So it happens that the explorer making for Aish finds himself the only passenger for Duncannon, and is like to feel important when for him the steamer hoots and stops, and he goes over the side into the ferry-boat, amid the interested and wondering glances of the excursionists for Totnes. [Illustration: STOKE GABRIEL.] Half-a-dozen strokes of the oars, and the boat brings you to the quay, nestling by the quiet waterside, where low cliffs of red earth dip to the shore. “One penny, sir, please,” says the old boatman, who, with straw-hat of primæval plait and design, like a thatched roof, seems a survival of the old Devonshire rustics, whose speech was so unintelligible to those tourists who were the first to ever burst into these unknown wilds. Appearances, it is well known, are deceptive, and here no less than elsewhere; for when you look upon the raw newness that has replaced the old ramshackly and delightfully sketchable aspect of Duncannon Quay, and remark upon the change, this seeming survival says—oh, the shock of it—“Oh, yes, it’s been thoroughly renovated.” Not unjustifiably, I think, one feels aggrieved, both at that renovation and at that departure from the ancient Doric of the countryside. Time was when this old lank boatman, with the clothes that seem to have grown in one of his native orchards, rather than to have been made, and with a tanned and freckled face, the colour of the russet apple;—time was, I say, when this ferryman, who merely paddles about in this remote nook of the Dart, would have phrased it differently, and would have said: “’Ee’s proper did up,” which is certainly more racy of Devon.