Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/271

 longer, they would infallibly run dry. But the Prior rebuked him for his want of faith and showed him plainly how the saints love monks and casks and take care of them, and even when hard put to it, have been known to work great miracles in their behalf. I suppose however you would be glad to hear some few particulars about Sir Philip, and how he came to test the barrels of Burgavenny and the faith of the monks. And if you have ever walked through Abergavenny with your heads on one side you will doubtless be inquisitive about that fine house a little way out of the town, that seems to have just stopped short of being a castle, and has an extensive and complicated coat of arms cut over the porch. But I am going to tell you about these matters, and you shall understand how this mansion was built, and what it had to do with Sir Philip Meyrick. Who, as I have said, was styled of Caerwent, and indeed he came from the neighbourhood of that town of an old Welsh family, whose pedigree kept getting longer and longer and their rent roll shorter and shorter as the Saxons followed the Romans, and the Danes the Saxons, and the Normans the Danes. Every century in fact added quarters to their shield, and subtracted carucates from their possessions, until uncivil people began to whisper that the Meyricks of Caerwent were decaying and would ere long be all uprooted from the soil or rooted under it; it did not matter which. But you may judge what a sound old family this was by the time it took them to fall to pieces, your modern houses gavegive [sic] a crack and