Only a brief space later, Hugh and this new companion in painted fool\'s clothes and with raddled cheeks made their way forth from the great west gate to the green. No formless loitering of idle men-at-arms now met their gaze. Straight lines of pikemen had been posted before each entrance to church or monastery, and in the open space beyond stood long regular ranks of other soldiers, with fluttering standards and a forest of tall weapons—all newly burnished—ashine in the morning sun.

The twain, with as bold a front as might be, walked down this passage of pikes until the captain of the watch, a burly, bearded man in Flemish armor, stopped them with uplifted hand; and two dozen pike-heads clashed down as by a single touch, to bar alike progress and retreat.
"Two Dozen Pike-Heads clashed down as by a Single Touch."

"Two Dozen Pike-Heads clashed down as by a Single Touch."

"I am the scrivener of the Abbey," Hugh called out from within this steel girdle, "and go forth to the Tolzey at behest of your master and mine—the Lord Duke of Gloster."

"And this merry fellow; hath the Duke need for him likewise?" the captain asked, with sharp glances. "I\'m sworn his Grace looks more for headsmen than for morris-dancers, as to-day\'s wind blows."

"Put thy queries to the Duke himself," said Hugh; "and hold us no longer waiting here, as he waits at the Tolzey."

Grumbling in his beard, the captain dropped his hand, and the pikes flashed upward. Hugh and the mock fool passed forth, and turned their feet townwards across the trampled sward. At the church gate to their right hand, a greater body of armed men stood, and beyond these, within the churchyard, high plumes on knightly helmets nodded in the morning breeze. Of what was going forward there the two saw nothing, but hurried on, glad to pass unquestioned.

They came thus to the market-place, held clear by solid walls of troopers, mailed, and armed to the teeth, behind whom the townsfolk, now heartily of but one opinion, strove to win friends and peep between steel shoulders into the open space. Still unmolested, the boy, bearing his inkhorn and scroll well before him as a badge of craft, passed with his companion to the side of the cross—where workmen toiled with axe and mallet to rear a platform of newly hewn beams and boards—and held his course straight to the Tolzey.

"Saw you what they build, there by the cross?" whispered Sir Hereward. "It is a scaffold, where presently axes shall hew flesh and blood, not logs." And then he added, "Whither go we; into the very tusks of the boar?"

"Nay, but to get behind him," returned Hugh, in the same sidelong whisper. "Halt you at the Tolzey door; mix there with the throng which idly gapes upon the soldiery, until chance offers to steal through some alley to the open fields."

"And you leave me there?"

"How shall it be otherwise? And—I say it now—farewell; the saints protect thee!"

"A word," the masker whispered. "Art sure it was a knight who ordered the letter to be writ?"

"None other. A knight in full battle harness. And—Oh! God save us! It is he!"

Before the low-browed Tolzey, or Toll-booth, a house of bricks on timber, with projecting gallery reared over open pillars, an urgent throng of citizens swarmed behind two rows of soldiers, to note the uttermost of what was passing. This Tolzey—at once exchange and town hall, court-house and jail—had in its long life seen strange things, but nothing like unto to-day, when the King\'s brother, Richard of Gloster, and John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, held bloody assize upon the enemies of the King. Above the gable floated, side by side, two standards of deep red stuff, on which were wrought, one the silver boar of Gloster, Lord Constable of England, one the silver lion rampant of Norfolk, Earl Marshal.

And at the porch, pushing their way through the press of onlookers under the arches between the pillars, a knot of men-at-arms dragged forward that same strange knight at whose bidding Hugh had written the letter!

"Look! It is he!" the boy repeated breathlessly, quickening his pace for the instant, then shrinking back dismayed.

Sir Hereward laid a firm hand on his arm. "I quit ye not here!" he swore, between clenched teeth. "Hasten we forward, and into the presence of the court."

"But—it means death to thee—" the boy began, as the other hurried him on.

"Better a thousand deaths—by fire and molten lead—than that this should happen," the other gasped. "Up with thy chin! They must not say us nay!"

What answers they gave, in what manner their arguments satisfied, the twain barely knew. The chief matter was that they won their way into the Tolzey, were borne up the foul, narrow staircase by the throng close at the heels of the soldiers and their captive, and suddenly found themselves stumbling over the threshold into a large room, whereof one part was densely crowded, and one empty as a grave fresh dug. A triple line of steel corselets, sallets, and bills, drawn from side to side, split these parts asunder, and behind this line those in authority at the door roughly made to drive the new-comers.

When Hugh had shown his writing tools and told his errand, they smoothed their tone and bade him stand aside, in the cleared space. The others—strange knight, his rude captors, the mummer-gentleman—all were swallowed up behind the barrier into the throng which snarled, and surged, and gnashed its teeth, in weltering heat and evil smells, under the spell of the scent of blood.

After a little while there rose an echoing blast of trumpets from the market-place without, riding as it were on the crest of a great wave of cheering. Then hurriedly the officers brought forth from an outer room two high chairs of state, gilded, and bearing the town\'s arms, and set them upon the floor-cloth under a canopy, and put behind these, on either side of the dais, other chairs and stools—and then bowed low as the doors in the centre were flung open with loud knocks, and two heralds, in blazoned tabards, entered. Behind these, with stately step, by twos came a score of great warriors and lords, mailed to the throat, and with pages bearing their cumbrous head-gear; then others of distinction, for the most part advanced in years, who wore rich gowns and chains, and held velvet caps in their hands; and lastly, two young men in gowns who wore their caps on their heads. And one of these, of a square, thick-featured aspect, with broad breast, and reddish hair, was Earl Marshal of England, yet had scarce a look from any one, so bent were all thoughts upon the other.

This other—clad in sober colors, with a broad chain upon his breast and a black close-curling plume in his cap—came sedately forward and sat in the large chair a hand\'s breadth in front of his companion\'s. He let his glance rest easily upon the crowded half of the room, as if noting things in idleness the while his mind was elsewhere.

The heralds called out each his master\'s exalted office, and what matters they had come now to rightly judge upon; and Hugh, having been seated at a desk by the window, hung with all his eyes to the face of the youth in the foremost chair.

It was a thin, thoughtful face, dark of skin and with a saddened air. The bended nose was long, the point well out in air to bespeak an inborn swiftness of scent. And above, wide apart, there burned a steady flame of great-hearted wisdom in two deep iron-gray eyes which embraced all things, searched calmly and comprehended all things. This Prince, though first subject and foremost soldier under the King, his brother, was even now but nineteen years of age; and Hugh, gazing in rapt timidity upon him, flushed with shame at thought of his own years, close treading upon those of this Prince, and of his own weak unworthiness.

The boy wrote down what the old men in gowns bade him say concerning the dreadful things that now were toward, and, writing, contrived also to look and listen with an awed, ashen face and bewildered mind.

Other soldiers had entered the room, and, making a weapon-lined lane between the door and the throng, brought forward now, one after another, the captive lords and knights taken red-handed from the Abbey or found in hiding in the town. Each in his turn, with elbows thong-bound at his back, with torn raiment and dishevelled if not bandaged head, was haled before the dais, and looked into these deep-glancing eyes of his boy judge.

Richard held them in his calm, engirdling gaze with never sign of heat or pity, and to each spoke in tones high and sharp-cut enough for all to hear, but of a level in cold dignity. When they in turn replied, he listened gravely, with lip uplifted so that his teeth were seen. Ever and again his fingers toyed with the hilt of............