There are apparently only two purposes for which a building, at such an elevation and in so desolate and remote a spot, could serve—that of a beacon house or of a hermitage. The former is the less probable explanation because of more suitable sites in the neighbourhood. The lack of documentary evidence in support of the latter hypothesis is not surprising and will carry little weight with those who reflect that it is only, as it were, by accident that we have any evidence at all respecting the other hermitages in the county. Comparing the cell on Roche Rock with other similar cells in various parts of England it may be inferred that the building was at one and the same time used by its occupants for both purposes. The foregoing survey discloses no such secrets as might have been expected. It leaves the story of Cornwall’s conversion where we found it. The key of the position remains undiscovered—the key wherewith to open and unroll the unwritten record of the struggles of those first fateful days when the Christian faith gained a foothold in the land. We are thrown back upon the witness of an age so late as to render the witness of doubtful value. If we refer to it, it is with diffidence, having little or no hope that, as evidence, it will receive the consideration it deserves. Yet in spite of all that may be urged against any particular legend, we must not forget that hagiographer and monk, chronicler and poet, cross and cell, holy well and church, all proclaim the same story and tell the same tale when they represent the heralds of the good tidings as wandering in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. The account of St. Sampson’s visit and the legend of St. Petrock are but types of the rest. It would doubtless help towards the solution of the problem if something more definite could be known of the quarter whence the earliest of those heralds came. Was it from Gaul, from Lerins, from the East or from Rome? We know that St. Hilary of Poitiers, in the middle of the fourth century, dedicated his treatise _De Synodis_ to the bishops of the British provinces, that St. German of Auxerre accompanied by St. Lupus of Troyes came over to Britain in 429 to assist in extirpating the Pelagian heresy. Does this point to some closer and deeper connection than that of mere propinquity between the Churches of Gaul and of Britain? The intercourse between Rome and Britain, the Roman soldiers and merchants who during the occupation were brought into daily contact with the Britons could not fail to effect some change in the religious attitude of the latter. It is not, however, this slow, silent, indirect influence which excites our interest. It is rather of that direct attack upon paganism which so far succeeded as to impress a definite character and to make it possible to speak of Celtic Christianity as a distinct type that we wish to hear.