Winding a little more than before, and still closely attended on its right by the Great Northern Railway, the road entered Baldock, or rather it approached that town, and then, refusing to be a main road any longer, turned off before the Toll Bar Inn to the right. Thus it dipped into the northern edge of the town close to the railway and the station, as a long, sordid lane called Bygrave Lane or Deadman’s Lane, past the gasworks, past the “Stag,” the “Swan,” and the “Black Eagle” in a row. This was the abode of the “Sand Boys,” who sold sand all over the country, and bought bones and rabbit skins. It is also the reputed scene of the death of Gypsy Smith’s wife and his own conversion. Past the nobly named public-houses the narrow street became a lane, rutted and half green, and edged on the left with nettles of wondrous height and density. The railway was closer and closer on the right; on the left was a new cemetery behind tall railings. At length the railway passed under the road. I was now again between high, extravagant hedges of thorn and wild roses. The road was wider, but rough, half green and half rutted, and in places divided into two by a thicket of blackthorn standing in the midst. A nightingale was singing among the roses above some old chalk pits. After a road from a level crossing had come in on the left, I kept straight on along the right side of a hedge dividing the railway from a big field, and past the left edge of a shallow chalk pit. There was no road here, but several tracks went through the long grass, and mistake was impossible. On the right two paths went off to some of the new houses of the Letchworth Garden City, and to a building gigantically labelled “IDRIS.” This was, I suppose, the temple of this city’s god, though the name, except as the Welsh equivalent for Arthur, was unknown to me. They say now that Arthur was a solar hero, and when in doubt men might do worse than to worship the sun, if they could discover how. At Letchworth they were endeavouring to do so. The sun was not benign or even merciful in return for these efforts. He responded by telling the truth with his most brilliant beams, so that the city resembled a caravan of bathing machines, except that there was no sea and the machines could not conveniently be moved. At the end of the big field I crossed a new road and entered among the elders and thorn trees of the edge of Norton Common. Here there were several parallel paths, and on the left behind a hedge was a garden-city street called “Icknield Way.” This represented the line of the road, but whether this or the path on the other side of the hedge was more on the old course I cannot say. Past the houses “Icknield Way” ceased to be a road fit for perambulators and became a rough track, chiefly used for carrying building materials. It followed along a hedge and past a sand pit, in one place a little hollowed out. It was miserable with the rank grass of newly “developed” districts.