Fice's well, near Prince Town, has on it "J. F. 1568." John Fitz, the astrologer, and his lady were once pixy-led whilst riding on Dartmoor. After long wanderings in the vain effort to find their way, they lighted on a pure spring, drank of it; and their eyes were opened to know where they were and which was their right direction. In gratitude for this deliverance, old John Fitz caused the stone memorial to be set over the spring for the advantage of all pixy-led wanderers. Alas! the convict establishment has enclosed the moor all round, and now this well, though intact, no longer stands, as I remember it, in wild moorland, but enclosed by a protecting wall in a field. In a certain large village of which I know something water was introduced by means of earthenware pipes for a considerable distance, and then conveyed to taps at convenient spots by iron and lead. Now there was one of these taps placed outside the Board school. The master said within himself, "If I go to the tap, I shall have to pay the water rate, which will be very heavy; if I never turn the tap, I surely cannot be required to pay. So I know what I will do. Go to! I will draw all my water from the well in the yard of the farm at the back of my premises." He did so, and lost his wife and child by diphtheria. Verily even modern Board school masters might learn something from these wild old pure water-loving Celtic saints. NOTE.--Book on Cornish Holy Wells:-- QUILLER-COUCH (M. and L.), _Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall_. London: Clark, 1894. ---------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER III. CORNISH CROSSES Abundance of crosses--The menhîr--Crosses marked the limits of a Llan--Crosses marked places for public prayer--Instance of a Cornish Dissenter--Churches anciently few and far between--The cross erected where was no church--Which therefore precedes the village church--Crosses as waymarks--The Abbot's Way--Interlaced work--The plait a subject for study. There is no county in England where crosses abound as they do in Cornwall. Second to it comes Devonshire. Indeed, on Dartmoor and in the west of the latter county they are as numerous as in Cornwall. Their origin is various. In the first place, where the pagans worshipped a menhîr or standing stone, there it was Christianised by being turned into a cross. In the second place, crosses marked the bounds of a _minihi_ or _llan_, the sanctuary of the saint. [Illustration: CROSS, S. LEVAN]