THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
mountains, and in another fell as it were into valleys; and springs of water burst forth and flowed between the hills like to brooks and rivers. Then was the bare earth covered with grass and trees and cornfields, and whilst the wizard continually uttered invocations (which the petitioner does not recollect, for he professes not to be a clerk, and affirms moreover that with this wild monstrous work his brain was muddled) slowly was built up in a valley below a bare round hill, twice the height of an ant-hill, the walls of a town, and the houses of it, and without one gate was a castle, and without the other gate a quire. Then the mansions and churches and farmsteads and cabins appeared on the face of the country around, and cattle and horses and sheep were made, and last of all men and women walking through the town, or labouring in the fields. Then did Sir Philip Meyrick perceive that he saw before him in little, the likeness of the town of Abergavenny; and the hills were the Blorenge, and Skirrid, and Sugar Loaf, and the streams the Honthy and Gavenny and Uske. But as he beheld this wonder the wreaths of accursed smoke, which came forth from the earth, began to mix with one another, and to gather together, and spread out above the earth, like clouds, and to drift across the mountains, as Maurice Torlesse continually waved his wand above them. Then did they change to a black colour, and seemed like ink, and the wizard smote the earth, where it resembled the cleft of the Great Skirrid, and flame gushed out from the end of the wand and ran all along the clouds as it had
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