Dartmoor by Arthur L. Salmon

hile not far off is Childe's Cross. The familiar legend tells how Childe of Plymstock was hunting on Dartmoor when he was separated from his companions in a snowstorm. He killed his horse and crept into its warm carcass to keep himself from freezing, but the expedient proved of no avail, though it apparently gave him time to scribble a kind of will on a stone, to the effect that--

"Who finds and brings me to my grave My lands at Plymstock he shall have".

Laws regarding the witnessing of wills seem to have had no operation in those days. Tidings of his death reaching Tavistock, the monks of the abbey immediately set forth to recover the body and so inherit the estate; but it seems that they were nearly forestalled by the townsmen, and it was only by the craft of the monks, who threw a hasty bridge across the Tavy, that they reached the abbey without having to contest their capture. Some say that their competitors in the race for Childe's body were the monks of Buckland, not the folk of Tavistock.