I30 THE BATH ROAD 



reputation for highway robberies, with or without 

 violence, and the desperadoes had so little care whom 

 they robbed that not even the Vicars of Hurley, who 

 came over to officiate at Maidenhead once a week, 

 were safe. This was so fully recognized tliat the 

 Vicars of Hurley used to draw an annual £50 extra 

 on account of their risks. 



In later years a farmer, whose name was Cannon, 

 was stopped one night on driving from Reading- 

 market. Two footpads compelled him to give up the 

 well-filled money-bag he carried with liim, and then 

 let him go, consumed with impotent rage at his help- 

 lessness and the loss of his money. 



Suddenly, however, he remembered that he liad 

 with him, under the seat of the gig, a reaping-hook 

 which he had brouoht back from Ijeino- mended at 

 Readini»-. That recollection brousrht him a brioht 

 idea. Turning liis gig round, lie drove back to the 

 spot where he had been robbed, by a back way. As 

 he had supposed, the ruffians were still there, waiting 

 for more plunder. In the dark they took the farmer 

 for a new-comer, until he had got to close quarters 

 with his reaping-hook, which they mistook for a 

 cutlass. Tlie end of the encounter was that one 

 footpad was left for dead, and the other took to his 

 heels. The farmer searched the fallen foe and found 

 his money-bag, together, it was said, with other spoils, 

 which he promptly annexed, and drove off rejoicing. 



After these tales of derring-do and robustious 

 encounters, the story of the road becomes compara- 

 tively tame as it goes on and passes through Twyford 

 and Reading. 



