Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/69

 an open book before him for form's sake, since his sight had failed him in his eighty-ninth year.

But when Sir Jenkin (or Bramantip if you like it better) had rung out Now that the star of day doth rise about thirty-six thousand, five hundred times, the cursed mark of the Freemason began to take effect, though why the devil had waited all these years is more than I can say, unless it be true that Satan loves to do everything in a cross-grained roundabout kind of way, unlike everybody else. And the first folk that Bramantip worried were the monks, and the first monk to be used spitefully was his own special monk or keeper, the monk who loved him and oiled him, brushed him down, burnished his gold, saw that his bells were nicely hung, and now and again dabbed his face with paint so that Saxons and strangers from outlandish countries beyond seas might not say when they came to the great May Fair: "The Knight of Burgavenny groweth old and wrinklesome, he botched his hymn most woefully, his armour is dull and tarnished, and his arm stiff with age. In fine Sir Jenkin plainly dotes, and is altogether decayed." Yet it was upon the good monk who loved him and cared for him that the old rascal played a scurvy unhandsome trick in the manner following, as it was told by the monk aforesaid, called in religion Brother John. Who deponed before the Prior, the Sub-prior and the Canons that whilst he sat his cell ravished in celestial speculations, he suddenly heard a great blow struck on his door as it had been a battle-axe smiting violently upon it, and immediately the door flew open, so that, turning round in