Lackford is a village that straggles along a mile of road with such intervals of foliage that I thought I was past the end of it when I came to where I could get tea. There was no inn; but the shop was better than the inn could have been. My hostess was one of those most active, little, stoutish and cheerful women who never go out if they can help it. Being descended from suffering and sometimes roofless generations, they seem to see no reason for returning to inclement nature when they have a good digestion and a water-tight roof; they make good jam and good tea. There were a number of things I should have seen near Lackford, such as the burial mound, north of Culford Church, wittily called the “Hill of Health,” and the road between Pakenham and Stowlangtoft called Bull Road, and some of the moats, at Maulkin’s Hall and other “Halls” of Suffolk. But the Icknield Way turned sharp to the right out of the road I had taken, opposite Lower Farm, soon after the ford of the Lark. When it was more important than the eastward road to Bury the Way curved round westward beyond the river, and its old course is marked by a depression through the furze on the right, which finally reaches the present road and is lost in it. [Illustration: Near Cavenham.] My road was now an ordinary white road between hedges, but with a furzy heath on both sides beyond the hedges. It had no grassy borders, but at the turning to Lackford manor-house there was a little triangular common on the left, of grass, gorse, hawthorns, and an ash tree. On the right there was a larger common, called Clamp’s Heath. On my left I saw corn and a field of pale sainfoin extending to the edge of a dark oak wood. The road was, if anything, slightly embanked over this level ground. After passing the Heath it had grassy borders and low hedges and corn on both sides, and then, after a short distance, no border, and on the right no hedge. Where it descended towards the woods of Cavenham it was sunk a little and had a left-hand border of grass. Just before this I saw the first chalk pit under the road on my left, with wild rose and elder on its floor. At Cavenham a new flat bridge of two arches crossed a tiny tributary of the Lark; but on the left of this was an old single arch about seven feet broad of narrow bricks, still firm but all grass-grown over its high curved crown which passengers used to mount like a barrel. The new bridge probably took the ford’s place. At Cavenham the road went under the trees of Cavenham Park--oak, beech, elm and sycamore, ash and aspen. Turtle-doves were cooing unseen. The house was some way off, the church farther, the village yet farther along a by-road. At each turning there was an open space for trees and men, for example, at the two ways down to Lark Hall. Beyond the second of these the road was lined by beech trees and wych elms standing in grass: it was cool, but gave a view of sunlit barley