s when some distant house is on fire. But you must shut the
window and hide before he came over the hill; for very few that had
looked upon the Dragon ever lived to that day twelvemonth. This
monster devoured the substance of the tenantry and yeomen. When their
fields of grain were golden for the harvest, in a single night he cut
them down and left their acres blasted by his deadly fire. He ate the
cows, the sheep, the poultry, and at times even sucked eggs. Many
pious saints had visited the district, but not one had been able by
his virtue to expel the Dragon; and the farmers and country folk used
to repeat a legend that said the Dragon was a punishment for the great
wickedness of the Baron's ancestor, the original Sir Godfrey
Disseisin, who, when summoned on the first Crusade to Palestine, had
entirely refused to go and help his cousin Godfrey de Bouillon wrest
the Holy Sepulchre from the Paynim. The Baron's ancestor, when a stout
young lad, had come over with William the Conqueror; and you must know
that to have an ancestor who had come over with William the Conqueror
was in those old days a much rarer thing than it is now, and any one
who could boast of it was held in high esteem by his neighbours, who
asked him to dinner and left their cards upon him continually. But the
first Sir Godfrey thought one conquest was enough for any man; and in
reply to his cousin's invitation to try a second, answered in his
blunt Norman French, "Nul tiel verte dedans ceot oyle," which
displeased the Church, and ended forever all relations between the
families. The Dragon did not come at once, for this gentleman's son,
the grandfather of our Sir Godfrey, as soon as he was twenty-one, went
off to the Holy Land himself, fought very valiantly, and was killed,
leaving behind him at Wantley an inconsolable little wife and an heir
six months old. This somewhat appeased the Pope; but the present Sir
Godfrey, when asked to accompany King Richard Lion Heart on his
campaign against the Infidel, did not avail himself of the opportunity
to set the family right in the matter of Crusades. This hereditary
impiety, which the Pope did not consider at all mended by the Baron's
most regular attendance at the parish church on all Sundays, feast
days, fast days, high days, low days, saints' days, vigils, and
octaves, nor by his paying his tithes punctually to Father Anselm,
Abbot of Oyster-le-Main (a wonderful person, of whom I shall have a
great deal to te