Bevis, who knew all the legends of the village, poured out these tales for the girls' benefit, and of course they naturally wanted to take a look at the place. So they climbed the eighty-seven rough stone steps that led up from the shore, and scrambled over the wall into the little churchyard. It was a neglected spot, but all the more picturesque on that account. Long grass grew over the graves, and moss had almost obliterated the names on the fallen stones, the framework of the doorway had sunk at one end, and the tower had lost some of its coping in the last gale. The great pieces lay strewn about the path. The windows looked cobwebby, but one of them was open, and, with some difficulty, Bevis hoisted the girls up to peep inside. The poor little church, flung aside now like a cast-off ecclesiastical garment, nevertheless showed signs of its former glories, when worshippers had given of their best to deck it forth. Its pre-reformation rood-screen, one of the very few to escape the commissioners' hatchets or Puritan whitewash, was carved with quaint figures of saints, and still showed traces of colouring in red and blue and gold. The oak benches, grey for want of oil or polish, were also carved, and in the chancel there was a splendid pew with a wooden canopy embossed and painted like the rood-screen, though plainly of a later date. The whole was mouldy and ill-kept, but at least had been saved from the ruthless hand of that foe to all antiquarian lore, the nineteenth-century restorer, who would probably have stripped it of rood-screen and carved benches, and have replaced them with pitch pine. "I'd like to sit in that gorgeous pew," said Mavis, dropping down from her perch, and examining her grazed hands tenderly. "That belongs to the Tallands. It goes with The Warren. There's an old monument down the nave to some of the family. You couldn't see it properly from that window," explained Bevis. "Don't they ever clean the place up?" asked Merle. "They do once a year, before the festival." "When is the festival?" "Late in May. They always have kept it at Chagmouth, and they make much more of it now because they have the war-memorial service at the same time, and everybody goes to that. The cross is up there, just at the top of the churchyard." The people from the several places which the tiny church had originally served had joined together in erecting a memorial to their brave boys who had fallen in the Great War--a plain Celtic cross of granite, placed on a platform of rock above the church, where it could be very plainly seen by all the vessels that passed by in or out of the harbour. It was a magnificent situation for it, far more romantic than any in the town, and to judge from the wreaths and bunches of flowers laid at its foot, it was the goal of an easy walk along the cliffs on Sundays. Mavis, who stopped to read the roll of honour, took the violets from her button-hole and laid them with the rest of the floral tributes.