Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/82

 for that end hard by the quire of the Convent. Then Sir Jenkin was dragged out, and the people shouted with such a shout that for a week after they could not so much as whisper, so glad were they to see this bad Knight doomed to die, and he was chained to the stake, and an incredible pile of wood lighted all around him and below him, and in this sort he was burned with fire and the lump of metal that was found cast into a hole in the earth and covered up out of sight. And it is related that the monks of Llanthony heard the great shouting of the people when Sir Jenkin was brought forth, and looked toward Abergavenny and lo! the sky grew red as blood with the flame of the fire; and they certainly thought that the Welsh had stormed the Castle, were burning the town and slaughtering the people. And after this Abergavenny returned to its old ways of pleasantness and began to laugh again, and drink and make love without fear of Sir Jenkin or his horrid battle-axe, and indeed began to laugh at him in his turn, though nobody who had seen him at close-quarters did this. And the tower being stripped of its roof fell by degrees into decay, and in the course of a hundred years there was not one stone of it to be seen on its original position, but a great many stones of it might be seen in Abergavenny and the country round about, where they were doing duty in walls and houses, and indeed they were very special achiler stones, too good to pave the roads with. As to the Freemason's carven work of dragons and other beasts whereon he had set his