In hedges they are also to
be seen, and in fields; many have been rescued from base uses; and all have
stood through the centuries as the sign and testimony of primitive Cornish
faith, even as St. Piran's white cross on a black ground, the first banner
of Cornwall, bore aloft the same symbol in days when the present emblem,
with its fifteen bezants and its motto, "One and All," was not dimly
dreamed of.
These ancient crosses now rose like gray sentinels on the gray life of Joan
Tregenza. At Drift she was happily placed among them, and many, not
necessary to separately name, lay within the limit of her daily wanderings,
and her superstitious nature, working with the new-born faith, wove
precious mystery into them. Much she loved the more remote and lonely
stones, for beside them, hidden from the world's eye, she could pray. Those
others about which circled human lives attracted her less frequently. To
her the crosses were sentient creatures above the fret of Time, eternally
watching human affairs. The dawn of art as shown in early religious
sculpture generally amuses an ignorant mind, but, to Joan, the little
shirted figures of her new Saviour, which opened blind eyes on the stones
she loved, were matter for sorrow rather than amusement. They did by no
means repel her, despite the superficial hideousness of them; indeed, with
a sort of intuition, Joan told herself that human hands had fashioned them
somewhere in the dawn of the world when yet her Lord's blood was newly
shed, at a time before men had learned skill to make beautiful things.
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