loo THE BATH ROAD 



jolly merchants. The gold they carried, however, 

 aroused the cupidity of the innkeeper and his wife, 

 who devised a murder-trap in one of the upstairs 

 bedrooms, by which the bed, which was placed above 

 a trap-door, was tilted up in the middle of the night, 

 so that its slumbering occupant was sliot into a 

 huge copper of boiling water, and so scalded to death. 

 Accordinsj to this tradition, which itself is some 

 hundreds of years old, thirteen victims were thus 

 disposed of, and the innkeeper waxed rich. There 

 must have Ijeen other accomplices, for, according to 

 the story, the bodies were kept until they formed 

 a cartload, when they were heaped up, driven away 

 to the Thames at Wraysbury and thrown in. One, 

 however, had fallen out by the way, and whilst the 

 criminals were disputing by the river-bank as to 

 what had become of it, they were observed by a 

 fisherman who had been hidden in the rushes while 

 engaged in setting eel-bucks. He suggested that the 

 best thino- for them to do was to throw in one of 



O 



themselves, to make up the number ; to which 

 sprightly wit they replied with a shower of arrows. 

 The fisherman then rowed away, with one of the 

 arrows sticking in his boat, and went with it into 

 Colubrook the follow^ing day. Outside the "Ostrich" 

 he was espied by the innkeeper's little son, who 

 exclaimed, " You have got one of my father's arrows ! " 

 The man and his wife were missing, but were after- 

 wards captured and hanged. 



This gory legend does not render Oolnbrook the 

 more attractive to the stranger, but the Oolnbrook 

 folks are proud of it. Like the Fat Boy in "Pickwick," 



