Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/83

 damnable mark, by the earnest counsel of the Prior of Estrighoil it was smitten into powder and cast into the air; for this Prior had been in France and Spain and knew all the crafty tricks of the Prince of Darkness, who must be entirely brought low, or he will jump up again as frisky as ever he was before. And here I would end my tale were it not that the monk John de Ferula in his exact annals hath set down a report concerning these curious circumstances which I must tell you of, for I will imitate the good monk and leave nothing out. And this report was to the effect that the Prior, the Baron and the townsfolk, had one and all been most thoroughly and deliciously duped and deceived in this matter; for the whole affair was a piece of trickery contrived by a company of merry wags of the place, the sole end and aim of whose lives was to serve up bamboozlements, trumperies, balderdashes, impostures and beguilements to their fellow men, and their greatest delight to watch them digesting these gallimawfries and moreover concocting sauces of their own to make the dish yet more pleasant. And John de Ferula declares that these jokers of Burgavenny were bound together into a mystery or Corporate Body, with pass-words and secret signs, and that some of them were young esquires in the Baron's household, that some were monks, and some the sons of gentry in the town, so that they were verily and indeed able to be in a good many places at one and the same time, and had a perfect intelligence of all the pleasant treaties, Cyprian covenants, and amorous pacifications