In some cases the “Cat and Fiddle” has become the “Lion and Fiddle”: notably at Hilperton, in Wiltshire, where a picture-sign represents a very mild and apologetic-looking lion walking on his hind-legs, with his tail humbly tucked between them, and playing a tune upon a fiddle--doubtless something doleful, to describe the folly of giving trust. At Moulsford, on the banks of the Thames, is the rustic inn displaying the sign of the “Beetle and Wedge,” a puzzling conjunction, until we learn that the “beetle” in this case is no insect, but a heavy wooden mallet, and the wedge a wooden, iron, or steel instrument struck by it in splitting timber. [Illustration: THE “SUGAR-LOAVES,” SIBLE HEDINGHAM.] At Sible Hedingham, in Essex, the sign of the “Sugar-loaves” strikes the traveller as curious, both in name and in shape. Sugar-loaves, of course, we never see nowadays, now that cube sugar prevails; and grocers no longer, as they did of old, receive their sugar in pyramidical-shaped loaves and cut it up themselves. Manchester people are familiar with a very curious sign indeed: that which hangs from the “Old Rock House” inn at Barton. On the sign is seen the figure of a man wearing a “fool’s cap” and intent upon threshing corn, and in his hands is an uplifted flail, bearing the mysterious inscription, “Now Thus.” The origin of this is found in the local story of how William Trafford, a staunch Royalist, outwitted Cromwell’s soldiery. Trafford owned South Lamley Hall, and when the troops of the Parliament were heard approaching, he caused all his servants and farm stock to be stowed away in a remote glen called “Solomon’s Hollow,” leaving him alone in the great house. When they were all gone, he collected his jewellery and plate, and, having buried them in a secret place, disguised himself in rough clothes, being discovered when the Roundheads arrived threshing corn over the place where the valuables were hidden. As they entered the barn they heard him repeating mechanically at intervals the solitary expression, “Now thus”; and although he was questioned by the officers, who took him to be a servant, they could get nothing else out of him, being at length obliged to depart, with the belief that they had been talking to a harmless lunatic. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.”] [Illustration: “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.” BLUEPITTS, NEAR ROCHDALE.] The De Traffords still live on this estate, whose wealth was thus saved by their ready-witted ancestor. It will be conceded that the “Boar” inn, more generally known as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” between Heywood and Castleton, on the Rochdale Canal, is not only a queer sign, but a queer house, being nothing other than an old passenger barge that used formerly to ply along the Bridgewater Canal, between Heywood and Bluepitt.