ul country
south-west of Newquay. In Perranporth, with its rocks and caves and
glorious bathing beach; in St. Piran's Round, that strange old
earth-work not far away; in the parish of Perranzabuloe, which means
Perran in the Sands; in Perranwell, near Falmouth, and even further
south in Perranuthnoe, which looks out across the waters of Mounts Bay.

But although memorials of him are to be found over most of South
Cornwall, it is the district of the Perran Sands, where he landed, lived
and died, that is his true home. There, where the soft Atlantic breezes
or the fierce winter gales sweep in to Perran Bay, you may look out over
the dancing sea towards Ireland and America with nothing but Atlantic
rollers between, or wander amid the waste of sand dunes that comprise
the Perran Sands and breathe in health with every breath you take.

Perranporth is on the edge of these sandhills, which stretch away
north-east to within four miles of Newquay--all within seven hours'
journey from London.

[Illustration: _St. Piran's Chapel_]

[Illustration]

THE LOST CHILD OF ST. ALLEN

They never talk of fairies in Cornwall; what "foreigners" call fairies
the Cornish call "piskies," or "small people." And all about the Duchy
piskies still abound for those who are fitted to see them. The old folk
will still tell you many strange stories of the piskies. One of the best
known is that of the lost child of St. Allen. St. Allen is a parish on
the high ground about four miles from Truro, and there, in the little
hamlet of Treonike, or, as it is now called, Trefronick, on a lovely
spring evening years and years ago, a small village boy wandered out
to pick flowers in a little copse not far from his parents' cottage.

His mother, looking from the kitchen door, saw him happily engaged in
his innocent amusement, then turned to make ready the supper for her
good man, whom she saw trudging home in the distance across the fields.
When, a few minutes later, she went to call her boy in to his evening
meal, he had vanished.

At first it was thought that the child had merely wandered further
into the wood, but after a while, when he did not return, his parents
grew alarmed and went in search of him. Yet no sign of the boy was
discovered.

For two days the villagers sought high and low for the missing child,
and then, on the morning of the third day, to the delight of the
distracted parents, their boy was found sleeping peacefully upon a be