Part the Sixth

So this time the church placed two ads in the San Giovanni Gazette, one for putting the bell back in the tower, the other for ringing the bell.

 To everyone’s surprise and dismay, an ugly troll showed up to put the bell back in the tower. Although loath to hire a troll, the Archbishop decided to let him do the job, for the Archbishop had noticed the troll was big and strong.

 With much struggling and grunting and groaning, the troll eventually returned the bell to its proper place.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the troll demanded the job of bell ringer.

 Naturally the Archbishop refused, telling the troll that he would frighten away the parishoners.

 The troll became enraged and chased the Archbishop around the bell. Around and around they ran, with the troll getting closer and closer!

 Suddenly, the troll's arm snagged on the bell rope!  Infuriated, the nasty brute pulled and tugged and jerked at the rope with all his strength.

 The bell swung forward and then back again, forward, back, forward, back, further and further, until it knocked the troll completely off his feet and out through the window, whereupon he plunged to his death upon the pavement below.

A horrified crowd gathered, and the tired Archbishop made his way down from the belfry, arriving just as a policeman knelt by the body.

The policeman asked the Archbishop, "What happened?"

The Archbishop explained that he had refused to award the troll the position of bell ringer, and that the ugly creature had begun chasing him.

“How did you ever escape?" asked the policeman.  Did one of the priests rescue you?  Or perhaps it was Heavenly intervention?

And the Archbishop replied ....

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Nooooo.....

I was saved by the bell.

Note:  I found much of this here:

http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~smann/Humor/bell.html

and here:

http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~smann/Humor/bell2.html

The fellow who posted it (unwittingly, I think) plagiarized some of his stuff from one of my Usenet posts back in 1995:

http://tinylink.com/?BYLcFRN8Fk

So now I have plagiarized some of it back.