name was Hale. At the beginning of last century she and her two
brothers, William and Robert Hale, were living in Colchester.
William Hale moved to Homerton, and became a silk manufacturer in
Spitalfields. Homerton was then a favourite suburb for rich City
people. My great-uncle's beautiful Georgian house had a marble bath
and a Grecian temple in the big garden. Of Robert Hale and my
grandfather I know nothing. The supposed connexion with the
Carolean Chief Justice is more than doubtful.

To return to Bedford. In my boyhood it differed, excepting an
addition northwards a few years before, much less from Speed's map
of 1609 than the Bedford of 1910 differs from the Bedford of 1831.
There was but one bridge, but it was not Bunyan's bridge, and many
of the gabled houses still remained. To our house, much like the
others in the High Street, there was no real drainage, and our
drinking-water came from a shallow well sunk in the gravelly soil of
the back yard. A sewer, it is true, ran down the High Street, but
it discharged itself at the bridge-foot, in the middle of the town,
which was full of cesspools. Every now and then the river was drawn
off and the thick masses of poisonous filth which formed its bed
were dug out and carted away. In consequence of the imperfect
outfall we were liable to tremendous floods. At such times a
torrent roared under the bridge, bringing down haystacks, dead
bullocks, cows, and sheep. Men with long poles were employed to
fend the abutments from the heavy blows by which they were struck.
A flood in 1823 was not forgotten for many years. One Saturday
night in November a man rode into the town, post-haste from Olney,
warning all inhabitants of the valley of the Ouse that the
"Buckinghamshire water" was coming down with alarming force, and
would soon be upon them. It arrived almost as soon as the