26 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



larly the moving spirit — a story which I shall tell here 

 because it connects another royalty with the Bath 

 Road. 



In the days, then, when people used to sit round ingle 

 benches and frighten each other with horrid tales to 

 make an excuse for taking strong waters, travellers by 

 night on the Bath Road used often to have a fright on 

 this side of Reading. They met, or rather were con- 

 fronted with — confronted is the proper word — two 

 figures with their faces set towards London. The usual 

 preliminaries in the way of hair standing on end, eyes 

 shooting out of sockets, horses trembling violently and 

 then running away, having been adjusted, the traveller 

 looked at the apparitions and found one was a fat king 

 in Lincoln green and the other a pale abbot extremely 

 emaciated, having his hand pressed meaningly on the 

 place where his supper ought to have been and clearly 

 was not — under which presentment the two figures 

 passed on towards London, the king beckoning the 

 churchman. So far so good. But what occurred when 

 the apparitions in a marvellously short space of time 

 were seen returning Reading-wards ? Why, a change 

 had come over the spirit of the dream and the order of 

 the procession. The churchman rode first, and his 

 complexion, so far as a ghost's can, had recovered all its 

 roses — his face moreover had filled out and his priestly 

 hands folded before him embraced a portly person. 

 Behind him rode the fat king tossing a purse of gold 

 and shaking his royal sides with paroxysms of ghostly 

 inaudible laughter ! The whole thing was a mystery. 



Its key can be found in Fuller. It seems that Henry 

 the Eighth one day lost his way out hunting, and as he 

 had started the chase at Windsor, and found himself 

 outside the Abbot of Reading's house at dinner-time, 

 he must be allowed to have got some distance from his 

 bearings. Clearly however the next thing was to dine, 

 and this he did at the Abbot's table, the bat-eyed 

 churchman having taken him for one of the Royal Guard. 



