Still the attacks did not slacken.  Indeed the hate of the citizens of Avignon against these two bold Englishmen, whose courage and resource they attributed to help given to them by the powers of evil, seemed to grow from day to day, even as the plague grew in the streets of that sore-afflicted city.  From their walls they could see friars preaching a kind of crusade against them.  They pointed toward the tower with crucifixes, invoking their hearers to pull it stone from stone and slay the wizards within, the wizards who had conspired with the accursed Jews even beneath the eyes of his Holiness the Pope, to bring doom on Avignon.

The eighth morn broke at length, and its first red rays discovered Hugh and Dick kneeling side by side behind the battlements of the gateway.  Each of them was making petition to heaven in his own fashion for forgiveness of his sins, since they were outworn and believed that this day would be their last.

“What did you pray for, Dick?” asked Hugh, glancing at his companion’s fierce face, which in that half light looked deathlike and unearthly.

“What did I pray for?  Well, for the first part let it be; that’s betwixt me and whatever Power sent me out to do its business on the earth.  But for the last—­I’ll tell you.  It was that we may go hence with such a guard of dead French as never yet escorted two Englishmen from Avignon to heaven—­or hell.  Ay, and we will, master, for to-day, as they shouted to us, they’ll storm this tower; but if our strength holds out there’s many a one who’ll never win its crest.”

“Rather would I have died peacefully, Dick.  Yet the blood of these hounds will not weigh upon my soul, seeing that they seek to murder us for no fault except that we saved a woman and two children from their cruel devilries.  Oh! could I but know that Red Eve and Sir Andrew were safe away, I’d die a happy man.”

“I think we shall know that and much more before to-morrow’s dawn, master, or never know anything again.  Look! they gather yonder.  Now let us eat, for perhaps later we shall find no time.”

The afternoon drew on toward evening and still these two lived.  Of all the hundreds of missiles which were shot or hurled at them, although a few struck, not one of them had pierced their armour so as to do them hurt.  The walls and battlements or some good Fate had protected them.  Thrice had the French come on, and thrice they had retreated before those arrows that could not miss, and as yet bridge and doors were safe.

“Look,” said Dick as he set down a cup of wine that he had drained, for his thirst was raging, “they send an embassy,” and he pointed to a priest, the same mad-eyed fellow who preached in the square when the notary Basil led them into a trap, and to a man with him who bore a white cloth upon a lance.  “Shall I shoot them?”

“Nay,” answered Hugh; “why kill crazed folk who think that they serve God in their own fashion?  We will hear what they have to say.”