"At this, the yeoman, who had been standing by, said, 'Dame, do you
mean this? Would you give the summoner over to the fiend?' 'Yea, that
I would.' she answered, 'and my pan too, so that I might be rid of
him.' At this the devil laughed. 'Now you are fairly mine!' he said
to the summoner, and with that he tucked him under his arm and
carried him off to Hell.

"So may we all be kept from wicked deeds, and Heaven shield us from
the power of wicked men! Amen."

* * * * *

This story naturally made the Summoner furious. He glared at the
Friar, and trembled with anger. "Let me have my say," he cried. "I'll
show what sort of stories are told concerning friars. They naturally
know all about the fiend. Just look at their names! What is the
difference between 'friar' and 'fiend'? Why, there was once a friar
that was taken by an angel to look at Hell, and at first as they went
down he saw never a friar, though many thousands of other people.
'How comes this?' asked the friar of the angel. 'Are all friars so
holy that not one of them is in Hell?' 'Wait,' said the angel, and he
led the friar down to the lowest pit where are chained all the
dreadful monsters. 'Look you now!' said the angel, and there, sure
enough, were thousands and thousands of friars all suffering the
vilest torments. That's the kind of men friars are!" Here the Host
interrupted. "Is this the kind of tale you mean to tell?" he asked.
"Yes," said the Summoner, "and worse. The friar is an extortioner and
a dupe and a hypocrite." "If that is so," said the Host, "we will not
hear it. You ecclesiastics can wrangle somewhere else. We want good
temper in _this_ party." The rest of us agreed with his sentence and