Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/155

 the fine trills and graces of the old Welsh song, I recognised very well the sweet throat of a sweetheart of mine called Mevamwy, who thus (dear merry maiden) sent us on our merry way. Then along the deep and narrow road, one riding after another between high banks of flowers and green leaves, till we began to pass through the midst of the forest, and here the buglers ceased, for with blowing their throats were dry, and with puffing their cheeks weary; and the way being wider we were able to go more together and to talk at our ease. "Here halt," said Nick Leonard the Lord Maltworm, "and cease horn, and strike flint on steel, for I am minded to smoke a strong whiffling pipe of tobacco." "So we, for one cannot relish the morning air without tobacco smoke, this forest roadway is so sweetly sheltered and embowered on either side that the blue clouds we blow, shall float and die into the larger blue, gently and by slow degrees." Thus the Rubrican answered for us all, and the smoke's wreaths rose upwards as he had said, and truly I shall never forget, so long as I live, the delicious savour of that pipe of Trinidado, taken in midforest and mingled with the morning, and gladness, sunlight, and green leaves and many roadside flowers. So we rode slowly along, and after a little while Tom Bamfylde (ah what a fair monument has poor Tom in Abergavenny minster) said "Let the fat Spigot Clerk smoke out his pipe and show forth one of the best tales he has in his hutch; and when we have to ride singly again, he shall be second, and bawl out the phrases of his story,