"It was no wonder if persons coming from Penzance to Pendeen of a dark night should miss their way and think themselves piskey-led," said the tinner. "There was neither bridge nor house in the place called New Bridge before wheel carriages were in use, and the only St. Just road from Penzance this side of Cardew Water was a mere bridle-path or rather a great number of horse tracks, often crossing each other and twisting about far and wide round rocks and intervening patches of furze, over miles of open downs and boggy moors, with no hedges near the road to keep it within bounds. When one track was worn too deep it was never repaired, as there was plenty of room to make a new one. Bridges then were few, and for the most part made by placing flat slabs to rest on the stepping-stones in some of the deepest streams, for the convenience of foot passengers. These old foot-bridges were ugly things to cross by night and the stepping-stones were worse." "We have all heard about the old stepping-stones in Nancherrow Water," said the tinner, who finished the foregoing story, "how, after day-down, no one could pass over them in going to Church-town without some mishap, and no person would venture to return that way until daybreak. Shortly before the[170] first bridge was built there, one of the overseers was a farmer who lived in the North of St. Just. Few persons then could either write or read, except one here and there, who passed for a great scholar if he could sign his name and read a chapter in the Psalter without much spelling. The overseer not knowing how to write or cipher, kept the accounts of his monthly disbursements on the dairy-door, in round o's for shillings and long chalks for pence. The last Saturday of each month he took the dairy-door on his back and carried it to Church-town, that the clerk might enter his accounts in the parish book. "One Saturday, in the season when days are short and streams high, the overseer couldn't make out his accounts and reach Nancherrow Water before dark; and, in passing, with the door on his back, over the wet and slippery stones, he lost his balance, and fell into the stream. By good luck the door was under, and floated him down to a place where the water spread out shallow and there he landed, but all the accounts were washed out. 'Tis said that the overseer's mishap was the reason why the first bridge was built over Nancherrow Water." "I can tell 'e another sad case," said the Capt. "We elderly folks have all heard of Uncle Will Ben, who was the parish clerk and the best fiddler in the parish, a little before I was born, and everybody says he was what we call a 'peathy old fellow, with plenty of gumption.'