The King’s eyes were not pleasant to behold. He had the “merry-thought” of a chicken in his hand, and was scraping the flesh from it with a silver knife. He looked attentively at the treasure that Comyn’s men tumbled on the floor below the dais. Then he broke the “merry-thought” in two, and folding the pieces in his fist, bade Reginald choose his lot. Reginald of Brecon pulled out the shorter of the two. The King laughed, a dry cackle that was ominous. “The shorter the bone, the shorter the shrift, gentlemen,” he said. “We will take care of this treasure for you, my lord Abbot. As for the cellars, storehouses, burgher tenements, and all such belongings, we make a night’s gift of them to those who thirst and hunger.” There was loud laughter, and a babel of voices. The flushed gentry at the table shouted “God strengthen the King.” One monk alone was mad enough to throw himself between St. Martin and the pleasantry of the royal spite, and that monk was Dom Silvius. He broke loose, and rushed with furious and stuttering face to the high table, brandishing his cross, fanatical as any Egyptian hermit out of the desert. “Spoiler of the houses of God!” The bacon was following the fat into the fire. Abbot Reginald, good man, lost patience, and threw his platter in Silvius’s face. Silvius, with a gobbet of gravy on his nose, looked comic enough, but still burnt like a Telemachus. “God shall revenge sacrilege! Let the curse of St. Martin——” Someone from behind took him by the collar, and twisted a fist into the folds till Silvius was in danger of being choked. The King lay back in his chair and laughed. “Take the prophet away, and let him be washed,” he said. “By the heart of King Richard, I have no use to-night for an Elijah!” In this way it came about that Dom Silvius took a ride on the back of an ass, with his feet lashed under the beast’s belly, and a dirty pot forced down over his ears. The mob pelted Silvius with stones and offal till he was a mere image covered with blood and dirt. Comyn’s Scots had the privilege of bringing the martyrdom to an end. They took Silvius from the back of the ass, and carrying him into the place where the treasure had been buried, pitched him into the _garde-robe_ drain, and so left him. Silvius’s blundering had, however, a grimmer significance, for it brought upon the Abbey and the town that straggled about it the same fate that had befallen the despised Cistercians. The King had given the place over to plunder, and it was at the mercy of the rough soldiery who were doubly insolent with the fumes of mead and wine. The folk of the borough of Battle might well have cursed Silvius and the Abbey treasure, for the devil was let loose among them that May night.