There is an exquisite touch of appropriateness in the fact that on converted Hounslow Heath, where these terrors of the peaceful traveller formerly practised their unlicensed trade, reformatories should be nowadays established. One of them, called by the prettier name of the ‘Feltham Industrial School,’ is placed just to the south of the road, near East Bedfont. It houses and educates for honest careers the young criminals and the waifs and strays brought before the Middlesex magistrates. The neighbourhood of this huge institution is made evident to the traveller across these wide-spreading levels by the strange sight of a full-sized, fully-rigged ship on the horizon. The stranger who journeys this way and has always supposed Hounslow Heath to be anything rather than the neighbour to a seaport, feels in some doubt as to the evidence of his senses or the accuracy of his geographical recollections. Strange, he thinks, that he should have forgotten the sea estuary on which the Heath borders, or the ship canal that traverses these wilds. But if he inquires of any one with local knowledge whom he may meet, he will learn that this is the model training-ship built in the grounds of the Industrial School. The ‘Endeavour,’ as she is called, if not registered A1 at Lloyd’s, or not at all a seaworthy craft, is at any rate well found in the technical details of masts and spars, and the rigging appropriate to a schooner-rigged Blackwall liner. Those among the seven hundred or so of the young vagabonds who are being educated here in the way they should go--those among them who think they would like a life on the bounding main, are here taught to climb the rigging with the agility of cats; to furl the sails or shake them free, or to keep a sharp look-out for the iron reefs that lurk on the inhospitable coasts of Hounslow Heath, lest all on board should be cast away and utterly undone. It is an odd experience to walk around the great hull, half submerged--half buried, that is to say--in the asphalt paths of the parade ground, but the oddest experiences must be those of the boys who, when they get aboard a floating ship, come to it thoroughly trained in everything save ‘sea-legs’ and the keeping of an easy stomach when the breezes blow and the surges rock the vessel. XII The village of East Bedfont, three miles from Hounslow, is a picturesque surprise, after the long flat road. The highway suddenly broadens out here, and gives place to a wide village green, with a pond, and real ducks! and an even more real village church whose wooden extinguisher spire peeps out from a surrounding cluster of trees, and from behind a couple of fantastically clipped yews guarding the churchyard gate. [Sidenote: _THE BEDFONT PEACOCKS_]