he held. For what more can
a father hope? But let us not weep before all these stranger men.
Farewell, son Hugh, of whom I am so proud. Farewell, son Hugh," and he
embraced him and went across the gangway, for the sailors were already
singing their chanty at the anchor.

"I never had a father than I can mind," said Grey Dick aloud to himself,
after his fashion, "yet now I wish I had, for I'd like to think on his
last words when there was nothing else to do. It's an ugly world as I
see it, but there's beauty in such love as this. The man for the maid
and the maid for the man--pish! they want each other. But the father and
the mother--they give all and take nothing. Oh, there's beauty in such
love as this, so perhaps God made it. Only, then, how did He also make
Crecy Field, and Calais siege, and my black bow, and me the death who
draws it?"

The voyage to Genoa was very long, for at this season of the year the
winds were light and for the most part contrary. At length, however,
Hugh and Dick came there safe and sound. Having landed and bid farewell
to the captain and crew of the ship, they waited on the head of a great
trading house with which Master de Cressi had dealings.

This signor, who could speak French, gave them lodging and welcomed
them well, both for the sake of Hugh's father and because they came as
messengers from the King of England. On the morrow of their arrival
he took them to a great lord in authority, who was called a Duke. This
Duke, when he learned that one was a knight and the other a captain
archer of the English army and that they both had fought at Crecy, where
so many of his countrymen--the Genoese bowmen--had been slain, looked on
them somewhat sourly.

Had he known all the part they played in that battle, in truth his
welcome would have been rough. But Hugh, with the guile of the serpent,
told him that the brave Genoese had been slain, not by the English
arrows, for which even with their wet strings they were quite a match
(here Dick, who was standing to one side grinned faintly and stroked the
case of his black bow, as though to bid it keep its memories to itself),
but by the cowardly French, their allies. Indeed Hugh's tale of that
horrible and treacherous slaughter was so moving that the Duke burst
into tears and swore that he would cut the throat of every Frenchman on
whom he could lay hands.

After this he began to extol the merits of the cross-bow as against the
long arm of the