His men were grouped outside the gate, chattering like
monkeys; the porter and the monks, from inside, entreating them, vainly,
to come in and go to bed quietly.
But they would not. They vowed and swore that a great gulf had opened all
down the road, and that one step more would tumble them in headlong. They
manifested the most affectionate solicitude for the monks, warning them,
on their lives, not to step across the threshold, or they would be
swallowed (as Martin, who was the maddest of the lot, phrased it) with
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. In vain Hereward stormed; assured them that the
supposed abyss was nothing but the gutter; proved the fact by kicking
Martin over it. The men determined to believe their own eyes, and after a
while fell asleep, in heaps, in the roadside, and lay there till morning,
when they woke, declaring, as did the monks, that they had been all
bewitched. They knew not--and happily the lower orders, both in England
and on the Continent, do not yet know--the potent virtues of that strange
fungus, with which Lapps and Samoiedes have, it is said, practised wonders
for centuries past.
The worst of the matter was, that Martin Lightfoot, who had drank most of
the poison, and had always been dreamy and uncanny, in spite of his
shrewdness and humor, had, from that day forward, something very like a
bee in his bonnet.
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