"And so the monks of Tavistock found the poor frozen gentleman where this cross now stands, and they took him away that he might be buried in their town, for under his last will and testament those who buried him were to possess all his estates. Others sought then to gain the body; but the good monks were too clever for them, and inherited the lands of Plymstock." "Ah! 'they must rise betime, or rather not go to bed at all, that will overreach monks in matters of profit,' as Fuller observes." "The people hereabout call it 'Childe's Tomb,' yet it can only be a cenotaph, if the story is true." "The whole thing is a legend, be sure. We shall never know the real use of this cross," answered Peter. "But might easily find a new one," said Mr. Kekewich, who walked beside Grace on his way to the workers. "Them stepstones be just the very thing we're wanting to bridge the river here." "Oh, Kek! how can you?" cried Grace. "Pull down a cross? Tut, tut, iconoclast!" exclaimed Mr. Norcot. "You may use wicked words, but stone be stone," answered the head man of Fox Tor Farm sulkily; "an' what was one way of marking a grave in the old time may very well stand for a bridge to-day. Look at they fools! What do they think they be doing?" Woodman heard the question. "We'm making a ford, and you'm the fool, not us," he replied stoutly. "What did the master say? Tell me that," asked Kekewich. "He said 'a bridge,' for I heard him," declared Norcot. "Ess, he did, an' when he sez 'bridge' he don't mean 'ford'; an' when he sez 'steer' he don't mean 'heifer,' do he? A bridge has got to be builded. So the sooner you fetch gunpowder an' go 'pon the Moor to blast out a good slab of stone as'll go across here without a pier, the better." "He don't always say what he mean, all the same," retorted Putt, who was in a fighting mood. "Yesterday he told me I was a pink-eyed rabbit, good for nought, an' this marning he called it back, an' said he was sorry he'd spoke it. That shows." "That shows he can change his own mind; it don't show the likes of you can change it for him. Here he comes, anyway, an' what I say, I say: that thicky cross-steps would make a very tidy bridge, an' save a week's work." "You'd touch that cross!" gasped Smallridge. "You--a foreigner from Exeter!" "Us have a right to it." "No man have a right to a stone once 'tis fashioned into a cross; an' if you was a Christian 'stead of a crook-backed heathen, you'd know it an' if a finger be laid against it, I'd not give a straw for the future of any man amongst us," cried Uncle Smallridge, rising to his feet in great agitation. "Fright childer with your twaddle, not a growed-up soul," answered Kekewich. "But no call to shake your jaw an' bristle up your old mane like that. My word ban't law. Here the master cometh, an' you'm like to hear more than will be stomachable when he sees what you've been doing."