The evil castle was soon cleared of whatsoever it contained (not even excepting a poor maimed Jew that had been so misused in the crucet-house that he could neither walk nor crawl), and so soon as everything was taken up we began to demolish the abominable walls. Many poor men who lived in that neighbourhood came to our assistance, and being first refreshed by meat and drink, they laboured with astonishing vigour, giving joyous shouts whenever a great piece of the building was brought down. By commandment of our lord abbat the instruments of torture were all heaped together in that foul cell under the keep, and a great supply of wood, brush-wood, and straw being placed therein, fire was set to the whole, and so mighty a combustion was made that the stones cracked, and the flints seemed to melt, and every beam or other piece of timber taking fire, the greater part of the tower fell in with a terrific noise, and a most hellish smoke. While the castle was burning it was terrible to see how the impenitent dark ladie did gnash her teeth and stamp her feet, as likewise to hear how she did curse Sir Alain de Bohun and our good abbat, and all of us that were there present. Surely in that horrid frenzy she would have died the death of Judas Iscariot if we had not bound her hands, and kept a strong guard over her. When the smoke cleared away, and we saw that the keep was nearly all down, our lord abbat distributed the victual and sheep and cattle among the famishing men who had come to help us, and who engaged not to leave the place until the moat should be filled up, and the walls all made level; and then we departed with our prisoners and all the treasure to Pangbourne, rejoicing as we went. Only no joy could be gotten into the sad heart of John-à-Blount; the commendations of that great man of war, the Lord of Caversham, did not cheer him, nor was he made the happier by our good abbat's telling him that he would provide well for him in some other manner of life than the monastic, for which he never could have had the due vocation. John thanked the lord abbat, but there was no joy in his gratitude. As I walked by his side I did try to comfort him by telling him that he had broken none of the greater vows of our order, as he was happily only in his noviciate; but he only shook his head at this my remark, and said, "Felix, it is not so much a wounded conscience and remorse, as something else that is leading me to the grave!" And then I saw that he was thinking of that foreign damsel that had led him into sin, and had then spurned his love, and I did thrice cross myself and fall to telling my beads, for verily phantasms of that other black-eyed maiden in the green kirtle came flashing through mine own weak brain, aye, lively effigies of her, both as I saw her first in her pride and beauty in our abbey garden, and as I saw her last, famine-wasted and crushed with fear in the castle-yard at Oxenford. But the saints gave