Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/195

Rh he came to open the church after restoration. As the rector was taking him in he pointed out the white stone. Bishop Benson at once seized on the idea suggested, and preached to the people on the text, "To him that overcometh will I give ... a white stone." (Rev. ii. 17.) In the churchyard is a holy well of S. Anne, not of the reputed mother of the Virgin, for her cult is comparatively modern, not much earlier than the fifteenth century, but dedicated to the mother of S. Sampson, sister of S. Padarn's mother. There must have been much fighting at some time in this neighbourhood. There is a fine camp in Swannacot Wood over against Whitstone. Week S. Mary occupies an old camp site, and another is in West Wood, and another, again, in Key Wood, all within a rifle-shot of each other.

Week S. Mary occupies a wind-blasted elevation, over 500 feet above the sea, and with no intervening hills to break the force of the gales from the Atlantic. The place has interest as the birthsite of Thomasine Bonaventura. She was the daughter of a labourer, and was one day keeping sheep on the moor, when she engaged the attention of a London merchant who was travelling that way, and stayed to ask of her his direction.

Pleased with her Cornish grace of manner, with her fresh face and honest eyes, he took her to London as servant to his wife, and when the latter died he made her the mistress of his house. Dying himself shortly afterwards, he bequeathed to her a large fortune. She then married a person of the name of Gale, whom also she survived. Then Sir John Percival,