THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
inconvenient, and likely to bring a man into trouble with the Archdeacon and the ecclesiastical courts. Wherefore he pressed his sweetheart strongly to tell him how she came to know anything about futurity, and perceived that his words annoyed her and drew tears into her eyes, and made her lips tremble. So with comforting the poor girl, stroking her soft hair, and kissing away the tears he forgot all about his perplexities, till he was alone again. And then they bothered him worse than before, because he saw that she was afraid to resolve him, the which made Sir Philip suspect that this was a bad business. After such sort a good many interviews were held between them, always with the same beginning and end; and Philip was so strongly bound with love's tendrils that he could not break away; but he got rather thin about the face, and a hogshead of Bordeaux wine lost all but the scent and fragrance of what it had once held. In these days Brother Toricellus the Cellarer would not patiently listen to anyone who affirmed Sir Philip Meyrick of Caerwent to be made of the same stuff as common men. "The times are coming," he would say, "when the Prior, the Sub-Prior, the Canons, and you and I, unworthy brethren and chiefest of sinners, shall drink water; de torrente in via bibemus, for there will soon be no wine left in the casks;" and all the monks grew pale and crossed themselves, for they began to think Sir Philip was a Silenus sent to chastise them for their shortcomings and misdemeanours. But Brother Toricellus, a man without faith, had led them astray, and made them
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