“What knaves are these, Dick?” cried Hugh, with his sword-hand alert on the hilt. “Of the old Bellasis breed,” Strangwayes answered, and let his hand fall from his mustache with the merest gesture toward the open window, and just a look which bade Hugh take his chance. “Ay, we apprehend you for the foul murder of my kinsman, Philip Bellasis,” spoke the man by the door. “Is that all?” Hugh asked, with a sudden nervous laugh of relief. He clapped his sword back into the sheath and tore open his coat. “Seize his arms!” cried the short-necked man. One of the serving fellows had sprung at him, when Hugh, striving to throw him off, saw Dick come to his feet at a jump and hit out. Somebody bellowed with pain; he found his arm free, and Dick’s shoulder pressing against his as they stood to the wall. “Have done, have done!” Hugh cried. “Read you there, Dick.” He thrust the parchment into his friend’s hands, and Dick, with a smothered exclamation, broke the seals. An instant of silence came upon the room, as if all had half guessed; only the rustle of the parchment and the heavy movement of the fallen serving man dragging himself to his feet broke the quiet, till Strangwayes spoke with ominous civility, “Will you deign, Master Bellasis, to bestow one glance upon his Majesty’s seal and signature?” “You’ll not deceive me—” said the gross man with much bluster, yet he came hastily, and, gazing upon the paper, read with dropping jaw. “Now have you any farther business with me, Master Bellasis?” Strangwayes asked easily. “Speak quickly, ere I go across the corridor to sup with Master Gwyeth.” The other said something that was choked with inarticulateness in his short throat. “I am ordering my supper now,” Strangwayes finished, as he went with much dignity to the door; “and hark you, sir, I want my sword brought back to me ere supper be on the table. For I’ll be wishing to fetch it along with me when next I come to seek you.” Then he made Master Bellasis a very low bow, and, catching Hugh by the arm, brought him out into the corridor. Right across the way was a vacant chamber, but almost before they were inside the door Hugh’s arms were about Dick, and Strangwayes, with his voice half smothered in the roughness of the embrace, was jerking out: “Heaven forgive Bellasis his other sins for the good turn he did in bringing us together. But ’twould have been a sorry companionship, had you not come so furnished.” Thereat he got Hugh by the scruff of the neck and set him down hard on the nearest stool. “Now, you thick-witted rogue,” he ordered, “why in the name of reason did you not call out to me from the inn yard and say you had that piece of parchment inside your coat? Here I sat a good half-hour and schooled myself into seeing you laid by the heels along with me. Faith, I’ll look to find white hairs in my head to-morrow.”