Immediately opposite is the little old grammar school where both Cromwell and Pepys--the latter before going to Westminster--were educated; a beautiful little twelfth-century building with a recessed and lavishly moulded Norman doorway surmounted by Norman windows and arcading. Originally the Hospital of St. John the Baptist, when the writer visited it recently the voice of the pedagogue, mingling with that unmistakable subdued murmur of schoolboys in their bridled hours, met us at the entrance in a manner so appropriate to the retrospective nature of the fabric as to more than make up for the loss of anything to be seen inside. Hinchinbrook, now and since the Cromwells sold it prior to the Civil War, the home of the Earls of Sandwich, is the "Great house" of the Huntingdon neighbourhood. Many will have to be reminded that the Cromwells were not such by actual right of name, but were descended from one Williams, a cadet of a respectable Glamorganshire family who, as a relative and favourite of the great Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, took his name for obviously practical purposes. This Richard Cromwell, _alias_ Williams, acquired much Church property at the Dissolution, Hinchinbrook among the plums. A man of parts, he became great and wealthy. His son Sir Henry more than sustained his reputation, and built the great mansion more or less as we see it now at Hinchinbrook. Royalty was several times entertained there, but with the third generation and Sir Oliver, that knight's continuously lavish living caused the transfer of the property to the Montagues. His younger brother Robert, however, had a generous portion in the Huntingdon estate, as every one knows except some foolish people who think because his only son Oliver is supposed to have had a brewery, and certainly was also a farmer, that he was not what the world calls a gentleman. Cromwell's position was of course far better than that of most younger sons of landed families, who had rarely any land and were only too glad of an opening in trade--even a humble one. For half a dozen miles through a flat country the road follows the Ouse to St. Ives. On the farther bank are the two Hemingfords, where tall luxuriant timber, mellow old buildings of various degrees, a large mill and wide-spreading mill-pool and forests of tall reeds, strike a fine contrasting note amid the far-spreading meadows. As you approach St. Ives, a huge old tithe barn at some cross roads would arrest the attention from any distance. It is called [Illustration: THE OUSE, HEMINGFORD ABBOTS, HUNTINGDONSHIRE] [Illustration]