The joy of the company in the hall extended itself to the buttery, where Gregory the jester narrated such feats of arms done by himself in the fray of the morning as might have shamed Bevis and Guy of Warwick.  He was, according to his narrative, singled out for destruction by the gigantic Baron himself, while he abandoned to meaner hands the destruction of Saint Clere and Fitzosborne.

‘But certes,’ said he, ’the foul paynim met his match; for, ever as he foined at me with his brand, I parried his blows with my bauble, and, closing with him upon the third veny, threw him to the ground, and made him cry recreant to an unarmed man.’

‘Tush, man,’ said Drawslot, ’thou forgettest thy best auxiliaries, the good greyhounds, Help and Holdfast!  I warrant thee, that when the hump-backed Baron caught thee by the cowl, which he hath almost torn off, thou hadst been in a fair plight had they not remembered an old friend, and come in to the rescue.  Why, man, I found them fastened on him myself; and there was odd staving and stickling to make them “ware haunch!” Their mouths were full of the flex, for I pulled a piece of the garment from their jaws.  I warrant thee, that when they brought him to ground thou fledst like a frighted pricket.’

‘And as for Gregory’s gigantic paynim,’ said Fabian, ’why, he lies yonder in the guard-room, the very size, shape, and colour of a spider in a yew-hedge.’

‘It is false!’ said Gregory.  ’Colbrand the Dane was a dwarf to him.’

‘It is as true,’ returned Fabian, ’as that the Tasker is to be married on Tuesday to pretty Margery.  Gregory, thy sheet hath brought them between a pair of blankets.’

‘I care no more for such a gillflirt,’ said the jester,’ than I do for thy leasings.  Marry, thou hop-o’-my-thumb, happy wouldst thou be could thy head reach the captive Baron’s girdle.’

‘By the mass,’ said Peter Lanaret, ’I will have one peep at this burly gallant’; and, leaving the buttery, he went to the guard-room where Gaston Saint Clere was confined.  A man-at-arms, who kept sentinel on the strong studded door of the apartment, said he believed he slept; for that, after raging, stamping, and uttering the most horrid imprecations, he had been of late perfectly still.  The falconer gently drew back a sliding board of a foot square towards the top of the door, which covered a hole of the same size, strongly latticed, through which the warder, without opening the door, could look in upon his prisoner.  From this aperture he beheld the wretched Gaston suspended by the neck by his own girdle to an iron ring in the side of his prison.  He had clambered to it by means of the table on which his food had been placed; and, in the agonies of shame and disappointed malice, had adopted this mode of ridding himself of a wretched life.  He was found yet warm, but totally lifeless.  A proper account of the manner of his death was drawn up and certified.  He was buried that evening in the chapel of the castle, out of respect to his high birth; and the chaplain of Fitzallen of Marden, who said the service upon the occasion, preached the next Sunday an excellent sermon upon the text, ‘Radix malorum est cupiditas,’ which we have here transcribed.