t again), he
turned to the other door to go out; for he had delivered his message,
and there was no more to be said.

The man that kept the door, and whose breathing Master Richard had heard
just now, barred the way, and asked him his business.

"My business is done," said Master Richard, "I must go home again."

"And the King?" asked the fellow.

"The King and my lord are gone back into the parlour."

There was no cause to keep Master Richard any longer, so the fellow let
him past, and he went down the gallery and the stairs towards the court
that opened upon the hall.

But before he reached the door, there was a great tumult overhead, and a
noise of men moving and crying, and Master Richard stayed to listen. (I
had almost said that it had been better if he had not stayed, but made
his way out quickly and escaped perhaps; but it is not so, as I now
believe, for our Lord had determined what should be the end.)

Two fellows came running presently down the stairs up which Master
Richard was looking. One of them was a page of my lord's, a lad dressed
all in purple with the pointed shoes of which I have written before, and
the other the man-at-arms that had kept the door. The lad cried out
shrilly when he saw him standing there, and came down the steps four at
a leap, with his hands outstretched to either wall. Master Richard
thought that he would fall, and stepped forward to catch him, but the
lad recovered himself on the rushes, and then, screaming with anger,
sprang at the young man's throat, seizing it with one hand, and striking
him in the face again and again with the other.

For an instant Master Richard stood amazed, then he caught the lad's
hands without a word and held them so, looking at the man-at-arms who
was now half-way down the stairs in his plate and mail, and at others
who were following as swiftly as they could. In the court outside, too,
there were footsteps and the sound of talking, and presently the door
was darkened by half a dozen others, who ran up at the tumult, and all
in a moment Master Richard found himself caught from behind and his
hands pulled away, so that the lad was able to strike him again, which
he did, three or four times.

So he was taken by the men and held.

Master Richard could not understand what the matter was, as he looked at
the press that gathered every moment on the stairs and in the court. So
he asked one that held him, and the page screamed out his answer above
t