castellated manor house just across the byroad. Of this only a fragment remains, but fortunately this fragment contains the “conspirators’ room,” as might be expected. The enterprising brewer has put this in good repair and has placed on view a number of relics of greater or less degree of merit. Among these is a pair of stupendous jack-boots, which our voluble guide assured us were the “hidentical boots what Holiver Cromwell wore” during a battle in which, as usual, he worsted the Royalists; but the placard above the relics was more modest in its claims, for it only stated that the boots were found on the battlefield. However, if the redoubtable “Holiver” wore these boots or anything like unto them when he met the enemy, one phase of his career may be accounted for—why he never ran away. Among the other curiosities with a real interest is the “Great Bed of Ware,” so famous in its day that Shakespeare immortalized it in his “Twelfth Night.” It is certainly a marvelous creation, some sixteen feet square, with enormous carved posts supporting an imposing canopy. Our guide asserted that in its early days no fewer than twenty-four men had slept in it at one time, and recited, in painful detail, the history of the bed. We inconsiderately interrupted him in the midst of his declamation and he had to start all over again, to his manifest annoyance. Even then he failed to finish, for the shadows were lengthening, and terminating his flow of eloquence with a shilling or two, we were soon speeding swiftly over the beautiful Chigwell road to London.

II
WANDERINGS IN EAST ANGLIA

Despite the fascination that London always has and the fact that one could scarcely exhaust her attractions in years, it was with impatience that we endured the delay imposed by business matters and preparations for a period of two months or more on the road. We were impatient, surely, or we should hardly have left our hotel at six o’clock in the evening, in the face of a driving rain. Ordinarily, two or three hours would have brought us to Cambridge, only fifty miles away; but we could not depend on this with the caution necessary on the slippery streets in getting out of London.

Once clear of the city there was little to hamper us on the fine Cambridge road and we counted on easily reaching the university town before lamplighting. The rain had nearly ceased, but the downpour had been tremendous, and in three successive valleys we forded floods, each one deeper than the preceding. Almost before we knew it—for in the gas lamps’ glare the rain-soaked road looked little different from the yellow water—we were axle-deep in a fourth torrent and were deluged with a dirty spray from the engine fly-wheel. Manifestly we were not to reach Cambridge that night and we reluctantly turned about to seek shelter somewhere else.

It was only a little way to the village of Buntingford, where we found clean though very unpretentious and not altogether comfortable accommodations at the George, a rambling old relic of coaching days. Our late dinner was fair and our rooms good-sized and neat, though dimly lit with tallow candles; but the ancient feather beds, our greatest terror in the smaller and a few of the larger towns, caused a well-nigh sleepless night. Morning revealed a little straggling gray-stone and slate village, unchanged to all appearances from the days of the coach-and-four. Our inn was a weather-beaten structure, and its facilities for dispensing liquor appeared by odds greater than its accommodation for non-bibulous travelers. Still, it was clean and homelike, in spots at least, and our hostess, who personally looked after our needs, was all kindness and sympathetic attention. Altogether, we had little complaint to lodge against the George, though greatly different from the really admirable University Arms at Cambridge, where we had planned to stop. We were early on the road, from which nearly all trace of the floods of the previous evening had vanished, and before long we were threading the familiar streets of Cambridge, where everything appeared to be in a bustle of preparation—at least so far as such a state of affairs could be in a staid English town—for the closing of the University year on the following week.

There is no finer road in England than that leading from Cambridge to Newmarket. It is nearly level, and having been newly surfaced with yellow gravel, it stretches before us like a long golden ribbon in the sunshine. It leads through wide meadow-lands and at times runs straight away as an arrow’s flight—truly a tempting highway for the light-footed motor car.

Beyond Newmarket the road to Bury St. Edmunds is quite as fine, and no doubt this splendid highway is largely responsible for the intense antipathy to the motor car in the former town. However, one would hardly expect Newmarket to be wildly enthusiastic over the horseless carriage, for this ancient burg contests with Epsom for the position of chief horse-racing town in England—a proud distinction it had held for some centuries before the motor snorted through its streets. Another cause for the grief of the townsmen was the complaint of owners of high-bred horses that the motors jarred upon the nerves of the spirited animals to their great detriment, and naturally enough the citizens sympathized with their patron saint, the horse, against his petrol-driven rival. And thus it was that when we entered Newmarket we were met by the Motor Union scout, who cautioned us to observe rigidly the ten-mile limit or we would more than likely share the fate of a half dozen of our brethren the day before—a journey to police headquarters. Two months afterwards, when we again passed through the town, the war was still on, and it was some months later that I read in the daily papers that after great bitterness on both sides a truce had finally been reached.

Despite its unfriendliness toward our ilk, we must admit that Newmarket is quite a modern-looking town, clean and attractive, with many fine buildings and excellent hotels. It lies in the midst of wide meadow-lands, much used for horseback sports such as polo and racing. Royal visits, so dear to the average Britisher, are a frequent event, and here it is that the King, usually in some new style of hat or cut of trousers, appears, to set the world of fashion agog.

Well clear of Newmarket and its birds of prey, the most glorious of roads brought us quickly into the fine old town of Bury St. Edmunds—and none other in East Anglia has been celebrated by greater pens; for Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle sojourned at Bury and left us vigorous records of their impressions. The former set them down in the story of the trials and wanderings of Mr. Pickwick, and that honest old gentleman’s comment on the town and its famous Angel Inn was altogether commendatory. It was later—in 1878—when Carlyle visited Bury, and the description he gave it then is quite applicable today. He saw “a prosperous, brisk town looking out right pleasantly from the hill-slope toward the rising sun, and on the eastern edge still runs, long, black and massive, a maze of monastic ruins.” The “Angel” we found still deserving of the encomiums bestowed by Mr. Pickwick, a delightfully clean and quiet old inn fronting directly on the abbey gardens and presided over by a suave and very accommodating landlord. We were given spacious and well-lighted quarters—we may dwell on “well-lighted,” since we could hardly apply this description, so far as artificial light is concerned, to more than two or three of the hundreds of hotels we visited.

The most impressive feature of