The happenings of the day depressed him when at last he had come to the inn. He could take nothing, and the innkeeper and his wife remarked upon it.
“Jesu, Master Cole,” quoth they, “what ails ye to-night? Never before did we see you thus sad. Will it please you to have a quart of burnt sack?”
“Willingly,” he rejoined; but presently lapsed into his former mood.
“I have but one child in the world,” said he, “and that is my daughter, and half that I have is hers and the other half my wife’s. But shall I be good to nobody but them? In conscience, my wealth is too much for a couple to possess, and what is our religion without charity? And to whom is charity more to be shown than to decayed householders? Tom Dove, through his love of jollity and good-fellowship, hath lost his all. Good my Oast, lend me a pen and inke, for straightway I will write a letter vnto the poore man, and something I will give him. God knows how long I shall live.”
“Why, Master Cole,” said the innkeeper, when shown what the clothier had written, “’tis no letter, but a will you have written.”
“’Tis true,” said Cole, “and I have but written that which God put into my mind.” Then, folding and sealing it, he desired his host to despatch it, and was not satisfied until he himself had hired the carrier. Then he fell a-weeping, and so went to bed, to the accompaniment of many other dolorous signs and portents. “The scritch-owle cried piteously, and anon after the night-rauen sate croaking hard by the window. ‘Jesu have mercy vpon me,’ quoth hee, ‘what an ill-favoured cry doe yonder carrion birds make;’ and thereupon he laid him down in his bed, from whence he neuer rose againe.”
The innkeeper also was shaken by these ominous things, and would have spared his guest; but his wife was of other mettle.
“What,” said she, “faint you now?”—and showed him the gold that had been given into her care.
In the end they served the unfortunate Cole as they had many another, and threw his body into the little river that runs near by: hence, according to the old accounts, the name of the place, originally Cole-in-brook!
This last ridiculous, infantile touch is sufficient to discredit the whole story, and when we learn that, according to one account thirteen, and by the testimony of another no fewer than sixty, travellers had been, in like manner, “removed,” we are inclined to believe the whole thing the invention of some anonymous, bloody-minded pamphleteer, and care little whether the innkeeper and his wife were hanged (as we are told) or retired with a fortune and founded a family.