age!" said their captain. "Go lay your
petition before Death, who will do your business swiftly if he has not
done it already. Get you gone, you English knight, with your white-faced
squire. We want no English here at the best of times, and least of all
if they hail from Italy."

"Come on, master," said Dick, "there are more ways into a house than
by the front door--and we won't want to leave our brains to grease its
hinges."

So they went away, wondering whither they should betake themselves or
what they could do next. As it chanced, they had not long to wait for
an answer. Presently a lantern-jawed notary in a frayed russet gown, who
must have been watching their movements, approached them and asked
them what had been their business at the Pope's palace. Hugh told him,
whereon the lawyer, finding that he was a person of high degree, became
deferential in his manner. Moreover, he announced that he was a notary
named Basil of Tours and one of the legal secretaries of his Holiness,
who just now was living without the gates of the palace by express
command in order to attend to the affairs of suitors at the Papal
Court during the Great Sickness. He added, however, that he was able
to communicate with those within, and that doubtless it might be in his
power to forward the cause of the noble knight, Sir Hugh de Cressi, in
which already he took much interest.

"There would be a fee?" suggested Dick, looking at the man coldly.

Basil answered with a smirk that fees and legal affairs were
inseparable; the latter naturally involved the former. Not that he cared
for money, he remarked, especially in this time of general woe. Still,
it would never do for a lawyer, however humble, to create a precedent
which might be used against his craft in better days. Then he named a
sum.

Hugh handed him double what he asked, whereon he began to manifest great
zeal in his case. Indeed, he accompanied them to the fortified house
that they had named the Bride's Tower, which he alleged, with or without
truth, he had never seen before. There he wrote down all particulars of
the suit.

"Sir Edmund Acour, Count de Noyon, Seigneur of Cattrina?" he said
presently. "Why I think that a lord of those names had audience with his
Holiness some while ago, just before the pest grew bad in Avignon and
the gates of the palace were ordered to be shut. I know not what passed
on the occasion, not having been retained in the cause, but I will find
out an