THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
terrible and destroying storm over the town, bearing rain in torrents, and winds that hurled down wall and tower, flung heavy stones into the air, and tore up tall trees and whirled them as though they had been hazel saplings. And all the sky crashed with thunder, and the lightning seemed as if it shot up into the black accursed air from the rocks of the Grat Skirrid and the mighty dome of the Blorenge, and the peak of the Sugar Loaf; and the waters of the Uske and the Gavenny boiled and seethed and streamed out all upon the land. Then did the great bells of the Priory chime out, and the bells of St. John's, and of the Churches of St. Michael and St. Teilo, and the two St. Davids, even till the quires of the mountains were ringing down the storm and matching the voices of the bells with the roaring of the thunder. In this wise they of course got the storm under at last, for no tempest can withstand the chime of bells, if they be rung aright; but everybody wished the wind and lightning had given in a little sooner before half-a-dozen men, a score of beasts, and as many sheep and horses had been struck dead; to say nothing of houses in flames or else quite ruinated. But it was noted that of late years there had been several of these cursed storms at Abergavenny, and some tried to prove that the weather like everything else was getting into a bad predicament and wanted the Holy Father after it. As for Sir Philip, he was in a perturbed state of mind, not wishing to have a prophetess to wife, believing that such personages were well enough in the old time, but now
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