XXXIII THE 3¾ miles onwards to Thetford were known and dreaded in the old days as “Thetford Heath.” Elveden Gap, passed on the way, is the name of a clump of firs, marking where the boundaries of estates and parishes run. Beyond it stretches the lonely heath. Pollard, in his terrifying print of the “Norwich Mail in a Thunderstorm,” makes this the scene of a very dramatic picture, with the lightning horribly forky and the rain very slanty and penetrating. Thetford Heath was an ill place on such an occasion; but the elements were not the chiefest of its dangers, which in any year from mediæval times until modern were rather to be expected at the hands of man. [Illustration: ELVEDEN GAP.] There still exists in the old church of St. George Colegate, Norwich, a tragical epitaph to the memory of a traveller slain on these wild wastes in those dangerous times. It is engraved on a ledger-stone forming a part of the flooring at the west end of the nave, and is hidden from the gaze of the casual visitor only by the matting. A skull and cross-bones are placed above the inscription, which runs:— “Here Lyeth y^e Body of Mr. Bryant Lewis, who was Barbarously Murdered upon y^e Heath, near Thetford, Sep. y^e 13th, 1698. Fifteen wide wounds this stone veils from thine eyes, But Reader, Hark! their voice doth pierce the skyes. Vengeance! cried Abel’s blood, ’gainst cursed Cain, But better things spake CHRIST when He was Slayn Both, both, cries Lewis ’gainst his bar’brous foe, Blood, Lord, for Blood, but save his soul from woe. THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER (Exodus xx. 13). Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For in y^e image of God made He man (Genesis ix. 6).” The register of St. George’s, which records the burial of the unfortunate Bryant Lewis on September 19th, six days following the murder, is at curious variance with the epitaph, for it makes the date 1697. We do not hear anything of the circumstances under which Bryant Lewis was killed, nor does it appear that his murderers were ever caught. Thetford must have been a welcome sight to the timorous travellers of old, and surely no place of pilgrimage was hailed with more delight than that with which they first glimpsed the tower of St. Mary’s and the outlying houses of the Suffolk suburb of the town.