THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
reached the Priory the monks made a shrewd guess as to who had got into this scrape and doubted not that he had crawled out of it by following the advice of Brother Audaenus—and by the aid of the gilt pudding, said the Larderer unto himself. But as a matter of fact Payne had taken a long leap through the gloom of midnight, across the flame of torches into the depths of the tree; and while he steadied himself a moment his hand pressed hard on a bough above his head, just in the place where there was an odd lump in the bark. Then strange to say the solid wood gave way from beneath his feet and he began to go down and down; down-a-down, steadily and swiftly to silence and pitch darkness, till he verily believed that he should soon discover whether Sir John Maundeville were right or wrong concerning the antipodes. Not that he cared two pins about the matter, but he thought since he had come so far it would be as well to look into it. However the earth brought at last his deep courses to a stay, and Payne was free to choose his own path and go wherever he liked, by which I mean to say, wherever he could. And now I am going to be exact and mighty positive about what happened down below; since I do not wish you to swallow a pack of fantastick lying legends, but only the exact truth. But the old Canon who told me this story thought fit to do quite otherwise (I suppose he took me for a fool); and gravely enough, without a crease in his cassock, showed how Sir Payne struck upon a passage that led to the underground Abbey of Thermopota, and lay there for eight
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