“Which way now?” gasped Hugh, looking back at the square where in the flare of the great fires Christians and Jews, fighting furiously, looked like devils struggling in the mouth of hell.

As he spoke a shock-headed, half-clad lad darted up to them and Dick lifted his axe to cut him down.

“Friend,” he said in a guttural voice, “not foe!  I know where you dwell; trust and follow me, who am of the kin of Rebecca, wife of Nathan.”

“Lead on then, kin of Rebecca,” exclaimed Hugh, “but know that if you cheat us, you die.”

“Swift, swift!” cried the lad, “lest those swine should reach your house before you,” and, catching Hugh by the hand, he began to run like a hare.

Down the dark streets they went, past the great rock where the fires burned at the gates of the palace of the Pope, then along more streets and across an open place where thieves and night-birds peered at them curiously, but at the sight of their drawn steel, slunk away.  At length their guide halted.

“See!” he said.  “There is your dwelling.  Enter now and up with the bridge.  Hark!  They come.  Farewell.”

He was gone.  From down the street to their left rose shouts and the sound of many running feet, but there in front of them loomed the Tower against the black and rainy sky.  They dashed across the little drawbridge that spanned the moat, and, seizing the cranks, wound furiously.  Slowly, ah! how slowly it rose, for it was heavy, and they were but two tired men; also the chains and cogs were rusty with disuse.  Yet it did rise, and as it came home at last, the fierce mob, thirsting for their blood and guessing where they would refuge, appeared in front of it and by the light of some torches which they bore, caught sight of them.

“Come in, friends,” mocked Grey Dick as they ran up and down the edge of the moat howling with rage and disappointment.  “Come in if you would sup on arrow-heads such as this,” and he sent one of his deadly shafts through the breast of a red-headed fellow who waved a torch in one hand and a blacksmith’s hammer in the other.

Then they drew back, taking the dead man with them, but as they went one cried: 

“The Jews shall not save you again, wizards, for if we cannot come at you to kill you, we’ll starve you till you die.  Stay there and rot, or step forth and be torn to pieces, as it pleases you, English wizards.”

Then they all slunk back and vanished, or seemed to vanish, down the mouths of the dark streets that ran into the open place in front of the dwelling which Hugh had named the Bride’s Tower.

“Now,” said Dick, wiping the sweat from his brow as they barred the massive door of the house, “we are safe for this night at least, and can eat and sleep in peace.  See you, master, I have taken stock of this old place, which must have been built in rough times, for scarce a wall of it is less than five feet thick.  The moat is deep all round.  Fire cannot harm it, and it is loop-holed for arrows and not commanded by any other building, having the open place in front and below the wide fosse of the ancient wall, upon which it stands.  Therefore, even with this poor garrison of two, it can be taken only by storm.  This, while we have bows and arrows, will cost them something, seeing that we could hold the tower from stair to stair.”