And there, on a byroad, in an embrace of trees, it is found, a little forgotten town, the greater proportion of whose inhabitants appear to walk with two sticks. It is ranged round a green or market-place, with a great Perpendicular church, gorgeously frescoed within, and with a very good recent "Ascension" over the chancel arch, painted and stencilled timber roof, and elaborate stained-glass windows. The townlet and townsfolk sinking into decay, the church an object of such care and expense, afford a curious contrast. An old toll-house and the prison-like buildings of Depwade Union conspire to make desolate the road onwards. He who presses, hot-foot, along it, turning neither to the right nor to the left, may readily be excused a legitimate wonder as to what has become of the great feature of East Anglia, its spreading commons; for, strange to say, despite the fame they have long since attained, no vestige of them is glimpsed from the road itself. One has usually to turn aside to some of the villages lying near, but wholly hidden from the highway, to find the yet unenclosed common lands, the pasturage of geese, ducks and turkeys; but a striking exception to this now general rule is the huge common of Wacton lying off to the left of the road at the hundredth mile from London, where a cottage and a wayside inn, the "Duke's Head," alone represent Wacton village, a mile distant. Wacton Common, reputed to be the highest point in Norfolk, although of no less extent than three hundred and fifty acres, might perhaps be passed without being seen, for the reason that, although still wild and unenclosed, it is screened from the high road by a hedge and entered through an ordinary field gate. The inn and the cottage, obviously built on land fraudulently taken from the common in the long ago, serve with their gardens to hide that glorious expanse of grass and heather. Here roam those chartered vagabonds, the plump geese, that pick up a living on the grassy commons and wander, like free-booting bands of feathered moss-troopers upon the heaths, closing their careers with royal feasting in the August and September stubble, and a Michaelmas martyrdom. [Illustration: A DISPUTED PASTURAGE.]