Now once again the men of Belsaye sighed and groaned and trembled in their armour, while from crowded street and market-square rose buzz of fearful voices.  Then spake the Reeve in troubled tones, his white head low-stooped above the battlement.

“Good Prior, I pray you an we unbar, what surety have we that this our city shall not be given over to fire and pillage and ravishment?”

Quoth the Prior: 

“Your lives are your lord’s, in his hand resteth life and death, justice and mercy.  So for the last time I charge ye—­set wide your rebellious gates!”

“Not so!” cried the Reeve, “in the name of Justice and Mercy ne’er will we yield this our city until in Belsaye no man is left to strike for maid and wife and child!”

At the which bold words some few men shouted in acclaim, but for the most part the citizens were mumchance, their hearts cold within them, while all eyes stared fearfully upon the Prior, who, lifting white hand again, rose up from cushioned chair and spake him loud and clear: 

“Then, upon this rebellious city and all that therein is, on babe, on child, on youth, on maid, on man, on wife, on the hale, the sick, the stricken in years, on beast, on bird, and on all that hath life and being I do pronounce the church’s dread curse and awful ban:—­ex—­”

The Prior’s mellifluous voice was of a sudden lost and drowned in another, a rich voice, strong and full and merry: 

“Quit—­quit thy foolish babblement, thou fat and naughty friar; too plump art thou, too round and buxom to curse a curse as curses should be cursed, so shall thy curses avail nothing, for who doth heed the fatuous fulminations of a fat man?  But as to me, I could have out-cursed thee in my cradle, thou big-bellied thing of emptiness—­go to for a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal!”

Thus, from his “mockery” perched high above the battlement, spake Giles, with many and divers knowing gestures of arm, waggings of the head, rollings of the eyes and the like, what time Roger and Walkyn and Ulf, their heads bent close together, busied themselves above a great and bulging wine-skin.

And now on wall and tower and market-square a great silence had fallen, yet a silence broken now and then by sound of stifled laughter, while the Prior, staring in wonder and amaze, suddenly clenched white fist, and, albeit very red and fiery of visage, strove whole-heartedly to curse on: 

“Ha—­now upon the lewd populace of this most accursed and rebellious city do I call down the—­”

“Upon thy round and barrel-like paunch,” cried Giles, “do I pronounce this dire and dreadful ban, videlicet, Sir Fatness, nota bene and to wit:  may the fiend rend it with gruesome gripings—­aye, rend it with claws and beak, unguibus et rostro, most mountainous monk!”

Here, once again came sounds of stifled merriment, what time the Prior, puffing out his fat cheeks, fell to his curses full-tongued: