[Illustration: STRETHAM.] The fine church stands to the left of the road by the cross, and is adjoined by an ancient vicarage. At the top of the main street, where the village ends, the traveller obtains his first glimpse of Ely Cathedral, four miles away. It must have been here, or close by, that Jack Goodwin, guard on the Lynn "Rover," about 1831, met Calcraft the hangman, for he tells how the executioner got up as an outside passenger "about four miles on the London side of Ely," to which city he had been paying a professional visit, to turn off an unhappy agricultural labourer sentenced to death for incendiarism, then a capital offence. Calcraft had been at considerable pains to avoid recognition, and had appeared in the procession to the scaffold on Ely Common as one of the Sheriff's javelin-men. Probably he feared to be the object of popular execration. When he mounted the coach, he was dressed like a Cambridgeshire farmer, and thought himself quite unknown. Goodwin took charge of his baggage, comprising a blue bag, half a dozen red cabbages, _and a piece of rope_--the identical rope that had put an end to the unhappy wretch of the day before. He then offered him a cigar (guards were fine fellows in their way) and addressed Calcraft by name. The hangman replied that he was mistaken. "No, no," said Goodwin, "I am not; I saw you perform on three criminals at the Old Bailey a few weeks ago." That, of course, was conclusive, and they chatted more or less pleasantly; although, to be sure, the conversation chiefly turned on Mr. Calcraft's professional experiences. He told Goodwin, when he left, that "if ever he had the pleasure of doing the job for him, he would soap the rope to make it as comfortable as possible." XXXIX THERE is little or nothing to say of the way into Ely, and only the little village of Thetford, and that to one side of the road, intervenes. Nothing distracts the attention from the giant bulk of the Cathedral. How shall we come into Ely? As archæologists, as pilgrims spiritually inclined and chanting a _sursum corda_ as we go, or shall we be gross and earthly, scenting lamb and green peas, spring duckling and asparagus from afar, for all the world like our hearty grandfathers of the coaching age, to whom the great white-faced Lamb Inn, that is still the principal hostelry of this city, appealed with much more force than that great grey religious pile? We will to the Lamb, which is not a difficult house to find, and in fact presents itself squarely and boldly as you enter. "Come," it seems to say, "you are expected. The cloth is laid, you shall dine royally on Ely delicacies. This is in no traditional way the capital of the Fens. Our ducklings are the tenderest, our asparagus the most succulent, there never were such eels as those of Ouse; and you shall conclude with the cream-cheese of Cottenham." Is an invitation so alluring to be despised?