and quiver when I stir!— May I not ask some worthy officer To speak for me, to what the bill may say?”

“Yea, certainly,” this Sumner said, “ye may, On paying—let me see—twelve pence anon. Small profit cometh to myself thereon: My master hath the profit, and not I. Come—twelve pence, mother—count it speedily, And let me ride: I may no longer tarry.”

“Twelve pence!” quoth she; “now may the sweet Saint Mary So wisely help me out of care and sin, As in this wide world, though I sold my skin, I could not scrape up twelve pence, for my life. Ye know too well I am a poor old wife: Give alms, for the Lord’s sake, to me, poor wretch.”

“Nay, if I quit thee then,” quoth he, “devil fetch Myself, although thou starve for it, and rot.”  “Alas!” quoth she, “the pence I have ’em not.” “Pay me,” quoth he, “or by the sweet Saint Anne, I’ll bear away thy staff and thy new pan For the old debt thou ow’st me for that fee, Which out of pocket I discharged for thee, When thou didst make thy husband an old stag.”  “Thou liest,” quoth she; “so leave me never a rag, As I was never yet, widow nor wife, Summonsed before your court in all my life, Nor never of my body was untrue. Unto the devil, rough and black of hue, Give I thy body, and the pan to boot.”

And when this devil heard her give the brute Thus in his charge, he stooped into her ear, And said, “Now, Mabily, my mother dear, Is this your will in earnest that ye say?”  “The devil,” quoth she, “so fetch him cleanaway, Soul, pan, and all, unless that he repent.”  “Repent!” the Sumner cried; “pay up your rent, Old fool; and don’t stand preaching here to me. I would I had thy whole inventory, The smock from off thy back, and every cloth.”

“Now, brother,” quoth the devil, “be not wroth; Thy body and this pan be mine by right, And thou shalt straight to hell with me to-night, Where thou shalt know what sort of folk we be, Better than Oxford university.”

And with that word the fiend him swept below, Body and soul. He went where Sumners go.

p. 49CHAUCER’S Reve’s Tale.

p. 49

MODERNISED BY R. H. HORNE.

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