As nearly everybody was agreed that the Icknield Way, coming from the Norfolk ports, probably crossed the River Thet and the Little Ouse at Thetford in that county, I went to Thetford. In the railway train I asked a man who knew all the country about him whether he knew the Icknield Way, but he did not. He knew where the oaks and pines grew best and what they fetched, the value of the land, the crops on an acre of it and what they fetched. He knew men’s rents and what each farm cost when it changed hands last. He knew also the men living and dead, and the lives they lived, what they were worth, and whose bed they died in. He was a man himself, a vast handsome fellow nearing sixty, well bearded, whiskered, and moustached, but not so as to hide full red lips and small, cheerful, and penetrating dark eyes. He weighed eighteen stone and a half and was not scant of breath, though he smoked strong tobacco rapidly in a large pipe. After much about the price of potatoes, etc., that came in at one ear and bolted straight out of the other, he told about himself and his family. Everyone at the railway stations knew him, and I suppose he thought I should naturally not wish to remain ill-informed. He was the youngest but one of six brothers, all weighing over sixteen stone; and his two sisters weighed over fourteen. He himself had eight children, the sons above six feet in height, the daughters above five-feet-eight--all of them persons who would not be blown away in a storm. His father before him was six-feet-three and weighed seventeen stone. After a time, pointing to a satchel with my name and address on it, he said:-- “Do you know anyone of the name of Fencer in your neighbourhood?” “No,” I said. “Her father,” he said, “used to own the Largease Mill. Polly Fencer. Very likely he has gone away now. She may be dead. It is twenty-five years ago that I am thinking of, and I will tell you what made me ask. My next brother was in love with her twenty-five years ago. She was a well-educated person, good-looking, and had the nicest temper of anyone I ever met, but not soft or at all weak. She liked my brother; but she was a companion to some lady and she did not want to marry at once. He did, however, and when she refused to be in a hurry he got cool for a time. In that cool fit he married another woman and had plenty of time to repent it. He lived with her twenty years and more, and she was always ailing. He never cared much about her and now she is dead, and it struck me, seeing the address on your bag, that perhaps if Polly was alive and free and hadn’t altered her mind, my brother might be glad to marry her. Certainly he couldn’t do a better thing than marry Polly. I know he never forgot her. But twenty-five years is a long time, and she may be married herself.... I should have liked to see him marry Polly, one of the nicest women that ever I saw.... [Illustration: Castle Hill, Thetford.]